Last weekend, my housemate and I were mugged at gunpoint while walking home from Dupont Circle. The entire incident lasted under a minute, as I was forced to the floor, handed over my phone and was patted down.

And yet, when a reporter asked whether I was surprised that this happened in Georgetown, I immediately answered: “Not at all.” It was so clear to me that we live in the most privileged neighborhood within a city that has historically been, and continues to be, harshly unequal. While we aren’t often confronted by this stark reality west of Rock Creek Park, the economic inequality is very real.

Year after year, Washington, D.C., is ranked among the most unequal cities in the country, with the wealthiest 5 percent earning an estimated 54 times more than the poorest 20 percent. According to the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute, just under 20 percent of D.C. residents live below the poverty line.

What has been most startling to me, even more so than the incident itself, have been the reactions I’ve gotten. I kept hearing “thugs,” “criminals” and “bad people.” While I understand why one might jump to that conclusion, I don’t think this is fair.

Not once did I consider our attackers to be “bad people.” I trust that they weren’t trying to hurt me. In fact, if they knew me, I bet they’d think I was okay. They wanted my stuff, not me. While I don’t know what exactly they needed the money for, I do know that I’ve never once had to think about going out on a Saturday night to mug people. I had never before seen a gun, let alone known where to get one. The fact that these two kids, who appeared younger than I, have even had to entertain these questions suggests their universes are light years away from mine.

I come from a solidly middle-class family, and, with relatives in Mexico City, certainly don’t consider myself entirely shielded from poverty. And yet I’d venture to guess that our attackers have had to experience things I’ve never dreamed of. When I struggled in school, I had parents who willingly sat down with me and helped me work through it. When I have a problem, I have countless people who I can turn to for solid advice.

When I walk around at 2 a.m., nobody looks at me suspiciously, and police don’t ask me any questions. I wonder if our attackers could say the same.

Who am I to stand from my perch of privilege, surrounded by million-dollar homes and paying for a $60,000 education, to condemn these young men as “thugs?” It’s precisely this kind of “otherization” that fuels the problem.

Young people who willingly or unwillingly go down this road have been dealt a bad hand. While speaking with a D.C. police officer after the incident, he explained that he too had come from difficult circumstances, and yet had made the decision not to get involved in crime. This is a very fair point — we all make decisions. Yet I’ve never had to decide whether or not to steal from people. We’re all capable of good and bad, but it’s a whole lot easier for me to choose good than it may be for them to.

If we ever want opportunistic crime to end, we should look at ourselves first. Simply amplifying police presence will not solve the issue. Police protect us by keeping those “bad people” out of our neighborhood, and I’m grateful for it. And yet, I realize it’s self-serving and doesn’t actually fix anything.

When we play along with a system that fuels this kind of desperation, we can’t be surprised when we’re touched by it. Maybe these two kids are caught, and this recent crime wave dies down, but it will return because the demand is still there, and the supply is still here. We have a lot, and plenty of opportunities to make even more. They have very little, and few opportunities to make ends meet.

The millennial generation is taking over the reins of the world, and thus we are presented with a wonderful opportunity to right some of the wrongs of the past. As young people, we need to devote real energy to solving what are collective challenges. Until we do so, we should get comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins. I can hardly blame them. The cards are all in our hands, and we’re not playing them.

510 Comments

” Until we do so, we should get comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins. I can hardly blame them. The cards are all in our hands, and we’re not playing them.” That is a truly incredible statement. Victim-blaming at its worst. You are actually trying to justify the thugs who pointed a gun at you and robbed you. No; it’s not your fault you were mugged. You were mugged because a couple of thugs thought that they could get an easy payday and saw you as an easy target precisely because of your so-called “privilege”. I suppose if you were murdered you’d blame yourself for that, too. Pathetic.

Nick and Chuck and anyone else who believes your crap.
All who agree with this liberal way of thinking are dumb as rocks too. I was born and raised in the South Bronx during the great depression prior to WWII. We were dirt poor. We didn’t have Social Service privileges and assistance that’s available now as food stamps, subsistence, etc.. Yes there were thefts by some to augment living, but by in large there were very, very few if any crimes against the person. Muggings never occurred. So many shared, and did work whenever possible, like shining shoes, odd jobs as shoveling coal, cleaning houses, sweeping sidewalks, etc. It was depression during DEPRESSION. Nickels and pennies were in the pockets. and nearly everyone had grocers who kept a balance due from customers. There were no credit cards. Doctors were paid with things, favors, etc. not necessarily cash. Crimes against the person are inexcusable. It’s drugs that are a big factor now. The Penal Law then was so much stronger then as a Cop could shoot to kill if he had reason to believe a felony was being committed. So now we should get comfortable with muggings and break-ins? Dumb ASS suggestion!

I think there are many things wrong with your article, but I will only focus on one sentence: “I trust that they weren’t trying to hurt me.”

1) You were harmed by being compelled by force to lay down, defenseless.
2) Armed robbery is an inherently dangerous felony. The gun could have gone off by accident, your friend could have resisted and been shot, police could have arrived and the thugs shoot you as a reaction to a new threat, or they could have shot the cops in an effort to flee. While I am extremely thankful you are okay, a person who purposefully places another human in a foreseeable position of death or grave bodily harm is a bad person.
3) The objectively reasonable person would not trust a person with a gun to his head. E.g., how do you think the criminals would have responded to a single police officer who arrived without backup? Would they have shot her or submitted without a fight to her authority knowing it would lead them to spend many years in prison?

Personally I’m not thankful he is ok. I think we need to let Darwin take care of the kind of liberal idiocy this “educated” moron is spewing. It is truly an astonishing amount of stupidity in one little article.

As someone who has been writing professionally over 40 years, my only comment is “gack!”

I love how college kids want to be the spelling or grammar police with their PC language de jeur. Writing is about communicating; communicating is about flow. Nothing stops flow faster than running into a silly “s/he”. True, I use it as a joke now and then, but I don’t think you were joking.

I have a feeling you rarely joke because, darn it, baby seals are dying out there and you need to hashtag to save them!

Um…no. The general pronoun is still “he,” or if the sentence structure may allow, “it” or “they.” “S/he” does not exist in the actual real world. This is a joke. Stephen, you either work in (i) academia, or (b) Burger King. LOL.

But your answer highlights a huge problem with this article, namely that if we justify a violent attack because of “lack of privilege”, why shouldn’t we justify other attacks?

I don’t think that the author of the article would have the gall to tell “you deserved it, because you’re privileged” to another person who was a victim of armed robbery. Nor (at least I hope) would he justify other crimes with the “lack of privilege” excuse.

This is what got me, and it’s one of the most fundamental misconceptions of Progressives (this attitude is pervasive in current US foreign policy).

Those muggers view you as prey. If they heard you say something like the above quote, they would sneer at your weakness. But If it somehow makes you feel better about your helplessness, go ahead and pity the muggers. It won’t matter to them, either way.

You’re walking down a
deserted street with your wife
and two small children.

Suddenly, a Terrorist with a huge knife
comes around the corner,
locks eyes with you,
screams obscenities,
raises the knife, and charges at you…

You are carrying a
Kimber 1911 cal. 45 ACP, and you are an expert shot.
You have mere seconds before he reaches you and your family.

What do you do?

Progressive Answer:

* Well, that’s not enough information to answer the question!
* What is a Kimber 1911 cal. 45 ACP?
* Does the man look poor or oppressed?
* Is he really a terrorist? Am I guilty of profiling?
* Have I ever done anything to him that would inspire him to attack?
* Could we run away?
* What does my wife think?
* What about the kids?
* Could I possibly swing the gun like a club and knock the knife out of his hand?
* What does the law say about this situation?
* Does the pistol have appropriate safety built into it?
* Why am I carrying a loaded gun anyway, and what kind of message does this send to society and to my children?
* Is it possible he’d be happy with just killing me?
* Does he definitely want to kill me, or would he be content just to wound me?
* If I were to grab his knees and hold on, could my family get away while he was stabbing me?
* Should I call 9-1-1?
* Why is this street so deserted?
* We need to raise taxes, have paint & weed day.
* Can we make this a happier, healthier street that would discourage such behavior?
* I need to debate this with some friends for a few days and try to come to a consensus.
* This is all so confusing!

Ugg, you know what, I think this kid is a fool for giving these thugs a pass, however, it never fails when some “conservative” comes along and brings up….TERRORISTS.

Now, I am actually a conservative myself, I’m just not one of those who goes around thinking there’s some Arab boogeyman hiding around every corner, you’re as bad as the Marxists who think there’s some KKK member always lurking, ready to kill some poor black person.

Thousands of people are killed everyday in America by illegal aliens, gang members, car wrecks, home invasions, poor diet, etc, yet you actually believe terrorists are the thing to worry about.

In the satire above there was no mention of race, creed or color. I think it would be fair to describe any person wielding a knife while screaming and running towards you as a “terrorist”. Why do you see Islamaphobic / xenophobic motifs where they are not?

Sadly he was taught this at Georgetown, like most other so called institutions of higher learning, its just a liberal indoctrination center. Whoever indoctrinated this lad to think this idiotic rubbish, should be tarred, feathered and run out of the country on a rail. Brainwashed by the anti-American, Caucasian hating cult of liberalism, this kid needs to be deprogrammed ASAP.

It may have escaped some of you, but this is not simple Victim-blaming. The writer, by blaming himself for the attack, deliberately assumes control over the event and by extension removes the issue of choice from the mugger – who, after all, could not help doing what he did. This is at once supreme arrogance and rationalization in the same breath. The assumption at bottom is that the writer has complete control over his reality, and that only he decides what happens through his choices. None of the rest of us rise to the level of choice unless he decides, and then only if our decisions please him.

What a arrogant individual. Of course, this arrogance, as many have noted, has been taken to its logical conclusion and the writer of this pieces reads as though he has been knocking back stupid pills. But trust me when I say that, in the world of the egoist, this all makes perfect sense. That it might lead to the writer’s own eventual extinction is just part of the price a swollen ego will pay – better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, as Milton wrote.

This yuppy wasn’t robbed. He’s clearly lying. And the part about having never seen a gun or knowing where to acquire one is most unbelievable. This guy, a college student (Isn’t he supposed to be educated?), is clearly insulting his reader’s intelligence with these statements.

Pathetic is that there are some who just don’t get it. The victim is not blaming her/himself. S/he simply isn’t blaming those who mugged him/her and suggesting that if we lived in a more egalitarian society there would be neither mugger nor victim.

Finally a voice of reason. Every other commenter employed the archetypes of gender conformity to assume that Oliver chose to identify as a male. This continues the brutal imposition of the male/female dichotomy so typical of insensitive Americans.

While I expect nothing better from Neanderthal conservatives, I do expect liberals to respect that Oliver may chose to identify as masculine, feminine, bisexual, or fremish.

Your use of “s/he” in spite of the traditional identification of the author as “Oliver” speaks to your deep understanding of gender politics and sensibilities.

Or your lack of reading comprehension skills. I’m not clear which.

As to the idea that Oliver was commenting that in a more egalitarian society there would be no mugger or victim, that’s simply childish balderdash. I fear you don’t know the meaning of the word “egalitarian” – this robbery had nothing to do with the inherent value of the parties in life but their financial, cultural and moral situations.

Little historical reminder – the Declaration of Independence is very egalitarian (“All men are created equal”) but it doesn’t guarantee all will end up with equal outcomes in life.

Mame? Are we doing classic musical comedy now? Labeling conservatives? Perhaps you should familiarize yourself with a rhetorical device known as “sarcasm.” I happen to be one of those “Neanderthal conservatives” which I believe should have been apparent if you had bothered to read the whole comment.

Arthur is clearly a male – fairly easy to determine from a quick Google search – so why the masturbatury clench to make this gender neutral? “Her/Himself”? “S/he”? LOL. Good luck getting a job outside of academia.

Well, Europe obviously isn’t “egalitarian” enough, since muggings occur there as well. How “egalitarian” do you (or Oliver) imagine a society must be for muggings not to occur? And how much damage are you prepared to do to our economic engine in order to achieve an end that could be better achieved by simply punishing muggers more severely where they usually start learning their trade — in school.

Actually, neither your critical thinking skills nor your vocabulary skills are working. “Egalitarian” within the social context (and as normally used) refers to the intrinsic worth of people, and has no place in this discussion. The equality of the three persons’ worth – the two muggers and Oliver – is not a factor here. To claim that a “more egalitarian society” would eliminate the existence of muggers and victim is nonsensical.

If you wish to enter into the area of egalitarian economics, you need to declare whether you are a Keynesian or a free market economist like Milton Friedman. Since I suspect you are unfamiliar with the complexities of these schools of thought in economics, I believe that you are vaguely thinking some form of economic justice, down with the 1%, corporations suck, yadda yadda.

Even under a Keynesian system that tries to achieve somewhat similar financial outcomes through government control (as opposed to a free market approach where freedom of opportunity is championed) you have inequality. There will always be people who have more than others. Surely your egalitarian society does not involve everyone having exactly the same amount of income, the same houses, the same clothes, the same stuff. The guy who works at Wendy’s will not earn the same thing as the airline pilot or the brain surgeon. I hope. So there will always be some people with more than others – and thus envy. There will always be those who will covet what others have. There will always be theft. There will always be mugging.

Even in the most perfect society. The only place where there is no mugger and victim is in the utopias that exist in the minds of liberal theorists who imagine what the world would be like if hey could control everybody’s lives.

The writer is an idiot. There’s not really any other way to explain it. He’s attempting to use the incident to portray himself as some sort of superior intellectual using economic inequality as premise. The irony is he simply shows himself to be completely out of touch with reality.

Sympathizing with armed robbers and justifying their behavior based on their lack of income is moronic at best.

Another point to mention here- these two thugs (there, I said it) could very easily have blown away these two college students on their way out the door. In fact, it happens all the time. And while the victim thinks he can sympathize with them robbing people, I would ask him the question, “if you were poor and desperate with few options, would you point a gun or a knife at someone to get their stuff?” Would you be wiling to kill, as these people often do, to get their stuff?

Even if violently mugging innocent bystanders really were the only way for these criminals to put food on their families’ tables (which it isn’t, and I’d bet that much or even all of the money they stole from you went to drugs or alcohol rather than towards helping starving oppressed children eat bread), that still doesn’t make it okay to mug anyone. Ever.

>What has been most startling to me, even more so than the incident itself, have been the reactions I’ve gotten. I kept hearing “thugs,” “criminals” and “bad people.” While I understand why one might jump to that conclusion, I don’t think this is fair.<<

Would it be okay in the author's mind to call them thugs if they had actually shot him?

Ok great–you got some college students to read your spiel about income inequality while also criticizing the very same audience for somehow letting all thefts in D.C. happen. Now what? You ended with some vague suggestion to somehow eradicate poverty. People are already aware of this. How does this help in any way?

Great perspective on a complex issue. I wonder where opportunity exists for more dialogue and breaking down some of the othering (on both sides of inequality in the city) to work towards diminishing crime, and ultimately the need for it. Moving beyond the “us” and “them” is an important first step and seeing people as people. It doesn’t condone actions, just refrains from demonizing our neighbors before trying to get to know more about them.

But I think she got in every single buzzword from her Peace Studies 1 course that she took second semester freshman year. You know, the course where everyone got an “A” except for those five people who didn’t write a final paper and had to settle for an “A-“.

@Rachel – you and Oliver are clear examples of one of the reasons why America is on a downward trajectory. You both are totally pathetic with the white/class guilt nonsense that the left has pushed down American’s throats. No white can do or say anything without being labeled racist or white supremacist (see Guliani’s recent foray). It’s high time that there is a huge backlash against PC BS, Critical Race Theory, disparate impact, and microaggressions. Just tell these race baiting poverty pimps to eff off. You know, it IS OK to eat tacos on Cinco de Mayo. It’s not cultural appropriation if you wear clothes that a different ethnicity wears.

This is the kind of thinking that would give a pass to the nazis for murdering 5 million jewish people. After all the germans said they felt there was an economical rift between the working man and the bankers and buisness owners who were privileged because of their wealth and status. Well the nazis did start as the German Socialist Workers Party. Not far off from the Democrat Progressive Party. Godwin can suck it, because its the same. The brown shirts cheaked their privalage and see what happened, the world burned.

Exactly, the problem is too little dialogue. If we only had more dialogue and understanding, the world would be peaceful and we would live as one.

Those of us in the real world have to acknowledge factors such as substance abuse, the breakdown of the family, crime, and contempt for education that have wreaked havoc on the District.

No sane person aspires to raise a family surrounded by dangerous and dysfunctional people and regularly pay a premium to stay as far away from them as possible. That’s why Georgetown is Georgetown and Anacostia is Anacostia. Once upon a time, even college students understood that.

Not the best of time to attempt dialog with a thug who is pointing a gun at you. Perhaps you should go to a midnight basketball game with a wad of cash in your new Mercedes and leave the keys in it and unlocked with a note in it saying help yourself it is insured. everyone will then be happy.

These weren’t his neighbors, Rachel, they were his muggers, i.e., his predators. Sure, they’re people, but inequality has little to nothing to do with their actions, any more than they had to do with the actions of Bernie Madoff or Ken Lay. And trust me, they did not see Oliver as “people” they saw him as prey, which he certainly is.

As that cop tried to tell Oliver, even people from deprived circumstances have decisions to make. You dishonor the cop who made good ones, and ironically, you dehumanize the muggers by denying their essential humanity when you deny their power of decision-making. Despite what you think, they are NOT helpless pieces of driftwood tossed by waves of circumstance onto the rocky shores of reality. They really ARE people — bad people.

Rachel, You are spot on. The writer does a service to all those who would read her/him. Unfortunately, too many people here aren’t reading her/his decency nor her/his prospective. They are criticizing her/him for having a heart, a mind, and an understanding that the world isn’t black and white but rather full of gray. Too bad not every one has the grey matter to understand that simple reality. And there I am committing the same sin I of which I am critical: seeing others as other than fully human.

Oliver is a male. A guy. Male. Not in question. Ergo “He/His/Him.” In written English, the masculine is still “he/his/him”, whether you choose to accept this or not. The “enlightened” Germans, French and Spanish, at last check (although my studies are a decade off), have yet to change this either.

Maybe you should invite the muggers to your house so that they can alleviate you of your white guilt. Liberals never fail to amaze me with their intense idiocy. These are CRIMINALS who should be dealt with, not encouraged.

You’re right. I think you should ask to spend a few private hours with Dayton Leroy Rogers or Edmund Kemper. You definitely wouldn’t want any of those nasty, biased prison guards around; after all, they insist on dividing the prison into us versus them and if they heard screams they might choose to disrupt this great meeting of the minds.

You’re trying to make two ends meet where they simply can’t. Criminal activity cannot be justified to the extent where more privileged individuals should just “accept” sporadic criminal behavior. Our privileges didn’t just fall from the sky, many of us worked to achieve what we now have at Georgetown. By no means should anyone assume that our benefits grant others the ability to perform injustice acts. As someone noted above, you’re showing a great amount of sympathy to these thugs, which is theoretically known as “Stockholm Syndrome.” No matter what situation you are dealt in life, choosing to do good is always an available option. While I can respect your great writing aesthetics, I simply cannot agree with this article and I recommend you re-read it with more open mind.

In a way, you are de-humanizing these criminals even as you write about how we need to consider their human nature. Humans have free will, yet you act as if they had no choice but to rob you. The vast majority of poor people choose not to rob people; these criminals used their free will to threaten your life with a deadly weapon for a few bucks, and in doing so not only placed you and your friend in fear, but everyone in the neighborhood who has to wonder if they’re next. That is inexcusable no matter what their life circumstances and they should go to jail for a long time.
Also, you don’t know what was in their head. If you had made one false move, they could have shot and killed you and your friend. It happens all the time.

One of the worse things about the New Left is that it de-humanizes the people it claims to “protect”. They’re no longer adult people with rights and responsibilities, they’re simply puppies that must be cuddled no matter what they do.

Concluding that this is self victim blaming may make the point for the author of this article – look a bit deeper than two guys got mugged. He was asking for perspective so that this incident wouldn’t contribute to the “us and them” look at our society. He wasn’t giving the muggers a pass at all – just noting that the quick dismissing of these “bad guys” perpetuates the divide between people in our city.

I am perfectly fine with having and “us” and “them”, with “us” being law abiding citizens and “them” being criminals. I feel sorry for the student who wrote this. How in hell does one get to place of such self-loathing that one feels they deserve criminal acts perpetrated upon themselves? This isn’t about unfairly judging someone because of skin color or gender–this is about judging someone as a bad person because they are willing to hold another person at gunpoint and steal their money! If you find that unreasonable, exactly what type of justice system do you propose? Should courts let people go because, “apart from that one time you killed a bunch of people, you’re basically a nice person and besides, it wasn’t your fault you went on a shooting rampage because you didn’t feel you were loved enough as a child, so it’s all good.”
Good luck with that.

I read this piece differently than previous commentators. I do not see the writer condoning violence against innocent people as much as trying to make sense of additional factors besides mere greed that may contribute to someone making such a bad choice.

” Until we do so, we should get comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins. I can hardly blame them.” The “I can hardly blame them” entirely revokes and excuses those from a rougher time who engage in crime of any responsibility for their actions. While the decision is easier in our cases, the decision is still the case in theirs; they aren’t choosing to shoplift or steal from some non-personal business, but instead to threaten the life of a fellow human being as a tool of coercion.

Perhaps the author had a wonderfully eye-opening experience with these two men, but having friends in Georgetown who have been violently mugged and severely injured by this sort of activity, we need to certainly understand what conditions are at play that enable this activity to be so prevalent, but we cannot excuse it as permissible. I think addressing long term issues of economic inequality and addressing the present safety of Georgetown residents need not be mutually exclusive options.

I think the comments show that people with common sense believe that is is wrong to hold other people at gunpoint and rob them. Knowing right from wrong has nothing to do with “privilege”, unless you are asserting that people who commit such acts don’t know they are wrong, which is obviously not the case.

No Crystal, I can read and comprehend just fine…and what he is saying is straight up white privilege on his part and no responsibility for the mugger’s actions on their part because he grew up “not poor”. I blame the criminals every time because it was their choice to commit a crime…not my choice to be a victim…although unlike Oliver, I take precautions to make sure I’m not a helpless victim. You can bet I wouldn’t have taken that mugging with out a fight.

You are aware that most victims of violent crime are not from privileged backgrounds and live no where near million dollar houses?

They are waitresses and retail clerks who have to walk home alone at night, and others who in their wildest dreams couldn’t imagine being affluent enough to attend a four year state school, let alone Georgetown.

Behavior is never random. All actions are the result of “factors.” Even if a “bad behavior” is committed by a “bad person,” you can pass the buck and blame their “badness” on something or someone else.

Armed robbery is inexcusable. I don’t care about your circumstances if armed robbery is the path you choose.

So those “additional factors” would then make it OK to rob/mug/attack someone? If it’s not the evil “greed” that all you libs hate and the mugger says “well, I was robbing him to feed the homeless on my street” – that makes it OK? What the hell is wrong with this way of thinking? To you all, greed appears to be the worst crime someone could commit – not mugging someone at gunpoint. I thought you all hated guns? So it’s ok in this situation? Cause, after all, the mugger is just another human trying to make his way through life, even if it’s breaking the law. Who am I to judge? Ya’ll would be singing a different tune if this happened to you or your loved ones. It’s easy to sit on your high-horses, judging all of us who think this drivel from the author is appalling.
So the next time I am mugged – should I try to get to know my mugger? “Hey pal, I know you’ve got a gun to me and my family but I want to get to know YOU. What makes YOU tick – ya know? If you are greedy, then I will damn your behavior but if you just need to feed your family – then go right ahead and take everything I’ve got!”
No. Just…..No. Anyone is beyond bat-shit crazy that even remotely agrees with this author.

Kudos to the author of this article. I think a lot of people will dismiss this article and this incredibly insightful author, which is really a shame. This article is important, and a great starting point to thinking about our personal privledges.

This article is important, albeit in a different way than is mentioned. To wit: this article perfectly illustrates disregard for personal responsibility when viewed in the dim light of political correctness. To argue the points made herein would be a waste of time – any objective thinker can flesh them out in an instant.

As a response to the above by ‘Danny’, I would simply say that freedom from violence and mayhem are inherent, and beyond ‘personal privledge (sic)’.

I know, right? Sort of like how that time I was raped, I really should have thought about how my privileged brought it upon me. Not how much I hated my Rapist. Because that’s othering. And othering is bad.

“Maybe these two kids are caught, and this recent crime wave dies down, but it will return because the demand is still there, and the supply is still here.”

Oliver, you are in the SFS, so I understand that you have taken at least 4 economics courses at Georgetown. As such, you probably know that your iPhone was not part of any supply of iPhones on the market; had you not felt a gun at your temple, I’d hazard a guess that you wouldn’t have just given it away to these young men for free. What happened here was a blatant disregard for your property rights. All this experience likely taught these young men was that your property rights, and the property rights of others, really don’t matter as long as you have a gun.

Given the tone of this article, I imagine having a $600 phone ripped from your hands was not an enormous deal to you. Perhaps I underestimate your compassion. In any case, if these kids are going to someday turn their lives around, they, too, have to trust that the goods they buy with their hard-earned cash won’t be ripped from their hands. For some, losing a phone means an inconvenient trip to AT&T; for others, it means months of scraping by to save up for a new one (and THEN an inconvenient trip to AT&T – which might cost them a day’s work or even a job).

I appreciate that you have taken steps to forgive those who have harmed you. I appreciate that you have approached this trial with compassion and empathy. However, I think your arguments here are a little misguided. Gordon Tullock can expand on my points: http://cameroneconomics.com/tullock%201967.pdf

(My apologies if you are the owner of a Samsung or Android phone. If so, please re-read the comment accordingly. Point still stands).

Your point here is a good one regarding considering the economic resources of those who are “victim” to crime in the city, and maybe even a better point about crime in neighborhoods surrounding college campuses.

When given the choice, people desperate for resources, or those who might have been socialized at a young age (maybe by being victims of crime themselves) to see stealing as a fact of life, choose to steal from those they are more confident will have money, nicer phones, and will be able to replace them more easily. While this makes more “economic sense” as you point out, it also points out how the “us” and “them” creates and is furthered by these acts and our responses to them.

Maybe seeing this “exchange of phone” as an economic event and not a human one is the problem, maybe seeing it as an event with people on either end of it with humanity that’s value extends beyond their participation in the economy, you can begin to solve issues, not throw away people and their worth as a person for one act (or multiple) acts they commit.

Sorry, Rachel. Criminals and wilding youth have repeatedly explained that they target people that seem like easy victims. Most of the time they are just having fun, like gamblers. So if you really wish to walk in their shoes (or yours again) — hey, human, you were made to go out and get them.

> “[They] choose to steal from those they are more confident will have money, nicer phones, and will be able to replace them more easily. While this makes more “economic sense” as you point out, it also points out how the “us” and “them” creates and is furthered by these acts and our responses to them.”

It sounds like the criminals – not us victims/potential victims – are the ones categorizing people into “us” and “them.” They are the ones making assumptions about us and our likelihood of being able to afford a new phone or wallet or whatever else. They’re initiating force and “otherization” whereas we are just reacting to it.

This is the most ridiculous opinion piece I have ever read, and the fact that it comes from a Georgetown student speaks volumes. Yes, I attend Georgetown University. In fact, I strove tirelessly to get here. You, Oliver, may think of my enrollment at Georgetown as a privilege, but I know it to be a privilege that stems from my own hard work and discipline. How is my enrollment at Georgetown keeping your muggers from finding work? From studying and performing well in school? From dedicating themselves to healthy activities such as sport or volunteerism? It is not.

Oliver, I’m afraid you are very, very wrong. Perhaps you feel guilty that your muggers couldn’t revel in the solidly middle-class upbringing you had. Perhaps you don’t feel you deserve to be at Georgetown, having parents who willingly sat down and helped you through your adolescent struggles. The police officer who aided you after your attack is absolutely correct. If you don’t believe a privileged Georgetown student such as myself, take it from someone who was once in a similar position as your muggers.

This isn’t an issue of privilege. It isn’t even an issue of haves versus have nots. It is a sociocultural issue that educates disadvantaged youth to take the easy route, the route of crime and assault, rather than the hard route that is education and responsibility. The cold, hard truth is that these young criminals could have attended an institution like Georgetown if they chose to. They could have been been productive members of society: teachers, firefighters, and policemen. Their choice was to rob you at gunpoint, not because of a stranger’s privilege, but because that is what they were raised to believe is fair and just. Yes, their situation is deplorable, and America has a long way to go in terms of economic development, yet not your existence nor mine is to blame.

On a side note, your notion that we should get comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins is simply shameful. To paraphrase Ann Richards, Oliver I believe you were born with a silver foot in your mouth.

“The cold, hard truth is that these young criminals could have attended an institution like Georgetown if they chose to. They could have been been productive members of society: teachers, firefighters, and policemen. Their choice was to rob you at gunpoint, not because of a stranger’s privilege, but because that is what they were raised to believe is fair and just.”

Actually, the cold hard truth “A” is that your comment is all sorts of naive. If attending Georgetown, and becoming a teacher or firefighter was so easy, a whole lot more people would be doing it. Expecting people to attain the same outcome when they have been given the worst possible opportunities is unfair and simply naive. Also, I fail to see where in the article the writer claimed that you or himself, because of your privileges, were to blame for these muggers’ situation. He simply wrote about people’s circumstances and their actions not being a clean cut indicator of whether or not they are “bad people” or “thugs”.

What may seem naive to you is the real world, plain and simple. I never said becoming a teacher or a firefighter was easy. In fact, I said the opposite. Educating yourself and assuming responsibility for your actions is hard. What was easy was to rob Oliver and his housemate of their possessions, at gunpoint no less.

I do not expect people to attain the same outcome when they have been given the worst possible opportunities, although it is certainly possible and happens every day. Nevertheless, I certainly do not expect my personal property to be stolen and my life put at risk for their sake.

No, Oliver never claimed that anyone’s privileges were to blame for the muggers’ situation. It was I who stated neither my privilege nor the author’s is responsible for the reprehensible actions of these young men.

These young men have been taught, trained even, to steal from Oliver because he is a privileged Georgetown student and to steal from him is fair. No one deserves to experience the fear that Oliver and his housemate experienced. What is truly frightening, however, is that Oliver seems to have bought into this idea of fairness!

Oliver did not simply write about people’s circumstances and their actions not being a clean cut indicator of whether or not they are bad people or thugs. He suggested I become comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins. The actions of his muggers are indeed inexcusable and should never be tolerated. While Oliver can hardly blame them, I myself will never be comfortable with the idea of crime and lawlessness.

One thing is for certain: for every one person on this comment section needing a privilege check, there are two who are in desperate need of a reality check.

“He simply wrote about people’s circumstances and their actions not being a clean cut indicator of whether or not they are “bad people” or “thugs”.”

A huge majority of “unprivileged” people still choose not to rob people at gunpoint. if you think that “lack of privilege” excuses criminal activities, that you “can hardly blame” the muggers, like the author of this article seems to do, you are actually being patronizing and offensive against the wide majority of people who lack privilege, have an extremely hard life, and yet manage not to rob people at gunpoint.

What this article does is slander the “unprivileged” people as potential criminals in a very condescending and patronizing way.

“The cold, hard truth is that these young criminals could have attended an institution like Georgetown if they chose to.” With what money? Georgetown is EXPENSIVE and not everyone can afford it. Scholarships don’t just fall from the sky and student debt is so crippling it can ruin lives. So no, they couldn’t just go off and attend college. College is a privilege.

Also, I really think that this article isn’t condoning violence at all. I think the author is simply stating that he’s aware of the privilege he has to never have to worry about missing a meal. Sometimes following the law means going hungry. Sometimes people are under so much pressure that they feel they have to rob somebody just to make it to the next day. Does that condone them? NO! But I think it means that we really need to have a talk about the economic imbalance in this country, which often forces people into this ind of situation: break the law or starve. INSTEAD of brushing them off with “they could have tried harder” or “they’re criminals,” how about we examine what has put them into their dire situation in the first place.

Do I think this article could have been written better? Yes. But I think you’re missing the point and I invite you to try to understand your privilege before you judge other people who live a totally different life from you.

Allison, Georgetown is expensive for students whose families can afford to pay its tuition, but plenty of people here do receive substantial financial aid (including me). A friend of mine (from a low-income family) has a complete need-based scholarship and does not pay anything towards tuition. It is definitely possible for those who work hard and aim high in life to succeed, whether at Georgetown or elsewhere.

First, you’re assuming that these criminals mugged the author in order to avoid starvation. That is unlikely. Second, saying “I can hardly blame them” is the very definition of condoning their actions. Oh, it’s not their fault that they pointed a gun at me and committed violence in order to steal my phone! It’s my fault for being white.

Georgetown is expensive. Ask the thousands of students whose families pay full tuition, a tremendous expense for most. College is indeed a privilege for those who are willing to work diligently for it. Nearly half of our student population receives some form of grant aid; for many qualifying students tuition is nearly paid in full. Out of all the factors that make Georgetown a difficult university to attend, money or lack thereof is not one of them. I suggest you take a look at the Office of Student Financial Services if you have not already, and read on the numerous opportunities offered to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. An acceptance from Georgetown is challenging for everybody, but attending Georgetown is impossible for no one.

Hunger in America is a completely separate issue. I can guarantee you, however, that these thieves were not starving. How? Men simply do not wander Dupont Circle in the very early morning, stealing cell phones and other personal property at gunpoint, in order to put food on the table. We can only imagine what these young men used the money for, but most of us can agree that it isn’t as rosy as you make it out to be.

If you really believe people in America have no choice but to steal from others or go hungry then you haven’t done your research. There is absolutely no reason for anyone in this country to go hungry and they don’t–unless they chose to trade their SNAP benefits for something else and choose not to go to a food bank or soup kitchen.
Do you see a lot of starving people in this country? Do you see anyone starving? We have instead an obesity epidemic, which is particularly pronounced among the poor.
It’s easy to make the Le Miserable argument that people have to make a choice between following the law or going hungry, but it is simply not true in America. Check out the stats. Being a Georgetown student I’m sure you know proper research methods but I will offer a reminder to check original source material as there is a whole heck of a lot of spin going on that the actual numbers don’t support (1 in 5 children in America are NOT going hungry, as you will see if you look at the actual USDA results and methodology).

And I think you are missing a far more viable point and invite you to try to understand the truth of your so called “privilege” from your ivory tower where you apparently look mostly down on others. It is condescending and contemptible to think that people less formally educated than you and those with far less money have less morality and weaker character and are thus more likely to commit violence. Countless poor people in this world have more wisdom, character, courage and moral fiber than countless numbers of supposedly “educated” people who happen to have more money. Attaining an education at the best university in the world is no guarantee of wisdom of superiority of ethics and by no means does it automatically confer character. Sadly, violence of all types are committed in this world by a wide range of people and evil, like good, comes from all kinds of people of various backgrounds. Stop stereotyping poor people and those of less “privilege” as somehow being incapable of knowing right from wrong.

Hey Oliver, don’t let these other commenters get you down. It’s very commendable to think critically about life, rather than just sail through it using comfortable assumptions and categories. You’re clearly not excusing the act of mugging in this piece; you’re asking us to think about those who mugged you as more than just “muggers,” “thugs,” or “criminals.” I respect that.

I think granting the offenders social consideration outside the realm of “muggers,” “thugs,” and “criminals” is inappropriate. By putting the blame on society, as opposed to the individual, the author is not only trying to explain the act, but indeed attempting to excuse it: “Who am I to stand from my perch of privilege…to condemn these young men as ‘thugs?'” The author is not condemning the young men to a label for a clearly criminal act, so he must be excusing them from it. You might say, “but he’s excusing them from the label, not the act itself blah blah” and this would be appropriate if the label was based on some stereotype or subjective judgement. However, there were clearly agents making a conscious choice to perform a (criminal) act. So then, it must be society’s fault for labeling because it perpetuates inequality, and that causes criminal action? No. Here, the action precipitated the label, so if we are to put blame on the label we must also put blame on the action. I’m not sure why society must bear the burden of bad choices. Even if inequality really is at fault, the muggers should not be seen under a different light than what they are, or we (at the very least) risk the excuse of their crime. We’re not making assumptions here, these people were in fact “muggers” and “criminals,” and there is evidence of action to support. So let’s call a spade a spade and move on.

If these men robbed your mother at gunpoint, I doubt you would have the same view. These two men made the decision to rob you, they are at fault. Stop this ridiculous shaming of those who worked hard and made good decisions in their life that has brought you to write this article.

I really wished people would think about this before replying with such close minded comments. The article is simply pointing out the often easily dismissed, and much bigger socio-economic disparities that cause these incidents. It didn’t strike me that he was blaming himself at all for the incident. He is simply saying that he understands the circumstances that led to it, which as a society we should all pay more attention to.

I don’t think anyone here would disagree with the your statement that “socio-economic disparities” exist. They clearly do. Yet, myself and others challenge your assumption that these societal conditions “cause these incidents.” In your attempt to explain why people from disadvantaged backgrounds would engage in criminal activity,you disempower them–removing their capacity to make decisions for themselves. Anyone who claims that they had no other choice has clearly never interacted with those individuals who took a different path in spite of the incredible challenges they faced in their life. Don’t render these honest men and women, who work so hard and achieve so much, as mindless drones.

P.S. — By categorically dismissing everyone who disagrees with the author as “close minded,” you are shutting yourself off from different perspectives and engaging in the exact behavior you accuse others of exhibiting.

Yours and the authors contempt of Capitalism is the real issue , Liberals can not stand our Capitalistic system and attempt to undermine it at any opportunity. This is what college professors are teaching these days.

I see that after $227k you leaned to express your view well but I wonder if you have leaned anything. You view is supported by serval assumptions and inferences that may or not be true. I comend you sanguine outlook but more than likely it isn’t supported by reality. A lot could have gone wrong. Your lucky to still be alive. Equality isn’t mesured by how much “stuff” someone has. Your perspective reminds me of John Lennon’s song “Imagine.” The world needs dreamers. I wonder if Lennon was thinking of fairness as he bled out.

People writing about privilege, you are deeply confused. Privilege is not something that can come from “hard work and discipline” or something that you can earn. Rather, it is a status assigned by society based on your race, class, gender, and ability among other factors. The otherization that Oliver highlights in his article, occurs just when people fail to recognize the privilege implicit to their perceptions of others.

Whose job was it to assign me my status based on my race, class, gender and other abilities? What governmental body does that? How can I get a job working to assign priviledge classifications to people in the US? Where can I check my priviledge score as a white-native american Zen Buddist transgender physically challenged former Army veteran? I cant seem to find my priviledge score on my drivers licence. It must be pretty low since I have to wait 6 months to get health care at the VA.

I’m sort of wondering… if he was forced to the floor during the course of a mugging while presumably outdoors walking home… does the campus feature landscaping that includes hardwood flooring or are the grounds carpeted?

Sorry, I forgot that we lived in India where we are forbidden from stepping outside of our social castes. I guess i’ll just go back to a middle-class lifestyle instead of completing a dual performance degree in the fine arts. After all, that’s for people with money and privilege, right?

Robbing someone at gunpoint is criminal. We have laws in our society that punish people for stealing another person’s property with the threat of lethal force and rightly so. As much as I would love to imagine myself with Bruce Lee abilities to kick ass if I were attacked, I realize I would react similarly to Oliver and his housemate that night – calmly follow directions.

With that being said, I want to address the general sentiments of the earlier comments. Arguing that the author gives his muggers a free pass and suggests that we get used to occasional break-ins because of our privilege is incorrect and misses the point of this piece. Instead of casting the incident in the traditional light of attacker versus victim, he challenges us, his peers, to consider what happened to him in a greater social context as opposed to seeing it as just a stand-alone occurrence to depict his attackers as stereotypical thugs.

Yes, his attackers could have chosen a different path as some have pointed out. Yet, they chose to threaten our peers with lethal force. It’s easy to cast them as bad, disruptive people who are wasting their lives, violating our property rights, and causing unrest. But for a moment, what if we were to actually see them as humans? What if we allowed ourselves to step back from our sense of reality to comprehend someone else’s? Would we then see them and ourselves in different light? Possibly and that’s worth a conversation.

Despite the implicit claims that people are somehow not viewing these criminals a human beings, I have not seen any evidence that such a state exists. But to go with your argument for the moment, just what are you proposing? That if they have had hardships, then we should excuse their behavior and allow them to rob people at gunpoint?
If you are proposing that we understand why people chose lives of crime and attempt to fix those problems I am with you. Sadly, though, there seems to be tremendous resistance to addressing the known causes of crime among disadvantaged people, to wit, lack of fathers in the homes, lack of respect for education, lack of a moral code that teaches right from wrong, and lack of taking personal responsibility for one’s choices.

It is precisely because they are human that we condemn their actions. If they were animals, if they acted only on instinct, then they would be blameless. You don’t condemn a scorpion for stinging, you might kill it because it threatened your life, but you wouldn’t condemn it. It’s just doing what comes naturally.

These are human beings who made a decision to take another human being’s property with the threat of lethal force. One wrong moment and the writer would have been dead.

It is because they are human that we condemn their actions. It is token liberals, like the writer, who attribute their actions to their socio-economic status, or to their race, that deny them their humanity, who attribute to them the status of animals.

“But for a moment, what if we were to actually see them as humans? What if we allowed ourselves to step back from our sense of reality to comprehend someone else’s? Would we then see them and ourselves in different light?”

By all means ‘step back from your sense of reality’ and go spend a few days and nights in the hood with these humans, I’m sure you’ll see them and yourself in a different light.

But for a moment, what if we were to actually see them as humans? What if we allowed ourselves to step back from our sense of reality to comprehend someone else’s? Would we then see them and ourselves in different light?

Well see that’s the problem, isn’t it? The original article and your comment robs the muggers of humanity by declaring them incapable of independent agency because of Politically Correct categorization via Privilege. In short, the article relies on Paternalistic Racism to render the muggers as incapable of anything other than the role they played, and reveling in its condescending ‘understanding’ of the role they have been assigned. They have been declared a blameless prop, with no responsibility for their actions.

Instead they should be viewed as independent agents, completely capable of choice, thus fully responsible for their acts and as such worthy of nothing more then condemnation.

The author has a right to be secure from violence regardless of his privilege or economic status. Full stop. The individuals who chose to engage in violence are responsible for their acts, not society. Not Privilege. Not Racism. Not Social Justice.

We do see them as human beings, which is why this behavior is unacceptable. Unless they lack capacity by reason of a mental defect, they are rational beings capable of considering options and making choices. They chose the wrong thing. Show me at least one person in this world that hasn’t suffered some sort of hardship? Hardship is often subjective and relative and an excuse to criminal behavior in narrow, carefully defined circumstances which do not seem to be present here.

Those who would not hold them accountable are those that don’t see them as human because they see them as lacking rationality, like for example when we see a lion attack – we don’t fault him because we don’t give him credit for rational thought since he isn’t human.

Alright Oliver, you are not only flaccid and irrational, but an embarrassment to our student body. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Every reader of this piece is now dumber.

And to The Hoya, how could you ever publish anything of this sort. I am disappointed.

In your argument, the action is justifiable given that the attackers don’t have what you have and merely want an opportunity to experience it, because the system has kept them down. I don’t have it, but I want it, and since no one is going to just give it to me and it’s someone else’s fault I don’t have it, don’t be surprised or hold it against me if I take it.

Maybe I can use that same logic in my next rape defense. I don’t have a vagina to use, but I want to experience a vagina, and no one will freely give me a vagina to use, so it should not be a surprise and you can’t hold it against me if I take your vagina and use it.

Riiiiight… An attack is an attack is an attack. Quit letting others not be responsible for their choices and actions.

This article is actually nauseating. MANY instances of violent crime (muggings, or the break ins that you recommend we “learn to live with”) do not end the way yours did (whether in physical injury, sexual assault, or even death). To suggest that Georgetown students, by virtue of being Georgetown students, should somehow accept that they deserve to be victims of crime, is a disgusting form of victim blaming. This logic is no better than the “she was asking for it” narrative that is all to prevalent in our society. Furthermore, you have managed to completely obscure the very real issue of socioeconomic inequality in DC with your completely incoherent train of thought.

Friedfield was indeed born of privilege – and the naiveté and stupidity of his sheltered and propagandized education is showing. His mugging was NOT an “economic issue.” He was very likely mugged by drug addicts, looking for money for their next fix – not by a modern Jean Valjean looking to buy bread for his children. Congratulations Oliver – your money is probably fueling drug-gang executions in Mexico or Guatemala.

He has swallowed the simplistic, “progressive” proto-marxist pap that somehow, all the world needs is more “redistribution” (guided by enlightened and angelic progressive leaders) and all social ills will disappear. In fact, all this leftist clap-trap, as we know, only brings more maldistribution, more social-ills and more crime.

Finally, Friedfield doesn’t understand that he is actually slandering “the poor.” In his world – they are not individual moral actors who can freely choose good and evil, but are crime-committing robots, programmed by their physical needs, too stupid and brutal to know the consequences of their choices.

“Finally, Friedfield doesn’t understand that he is actually slandering “the poor.” In his world – they are not individual moral actors who can freely choose good and evil, but are crime-committing robots, programmed by their physical needs, too stupid and brutal to know the consequences of their choices.The soft bigotry of low expectations.”

“We’re all capable of good and bad, but it’s a whole lot easier for me to choose good than it may be for them to.” This statement is FUNDAMENTALLY wrong. So privilege/wealth/a Georgetown education makes it is easier to choose good?

As someone who disagrees with the majority of this speech, I do have to say, yes, absolutely having the opportunities and wealth provided by Georgetown makes it easier to defer from criminal activities than in a case of greater impetus/necessity.

That depends upon what the person wants. You are talking about the will to resist temptation. I will grant that if you are literally starving, it will be harder to resist stealing food than if you are not hungry. Apart from that, all else is equal. A rich person with no moral compass can give in to his/her temptations to swindle clients out of money just as a poor person give in to temptation to steal from others to get more stuff.

I want to thank you so very much for writing this insightful and important article. When I was in my sophomore year at Georgetown, I too, was robbed of my cell phone at gunpoint. I reacted very much the same way that you did to the incident afterwards.

It’s easy to write off those children who had robbed me, only 14, 15 and 16, as “thugs”, menaces to society that deserve to be put away. No, I never thought that about my attackers. It was the first time I really had to take a step back, reflect, and question the kind of world we live in and how the system had failed these young boys.

Skimming the hateful and ignorant comments that followed this article was something else that made me incredibly saddened by the members of our Georgetown community. So, with the hopes of educating your critics, I want to help address some of the arguments that they’ve brought up:

(1) This is not victim-blaming. No, you didn’t ask to be mugged. Nobody asks or deserves to be mugged, raped, or assaulted. It is never the personal fault of the victim. And from my reading of the article, I had never gotten the impression that you personally blamed yourself for or even remotely suggested that you deserved to have the crime that was committed against you. It was the robber’s choice to point that gun at you that night, but it is inequality in society that was responsible for those choices. No child is born and thinks “when I grow up, I want to become a criminal”. Their circumstances push them into that state of thinking. Whether they are born into this type of family, grow up in these types of environments where they are not afforded the proper education and are neglected by their community, lack guidance and opportunities to be taught otherwise, or most likely the combination of all of that, this is not their fault. I can bet you that not one of these young men who had mugged you and I were ever told “you are worth it and there is better out there for you, let me help you find a way out”. On the other hand, you did not choose to be born into white-middle-class-male privilege. In an ideal society, whether you are born Black, White, Asian, Latino, Native American, etc., male or female, heterosexual or homosexual, shouldn’t make a difference in the opportunities you are afforded, how you are treated at convenient stores, have people think they can sexually harass you on the street, nor be the target of hate-crimes, but absolutely it does. This is a pervasive issue in society and there is nothing more detrimental to addressing it than thinking that it isn’t an issue but isolated incidents of some “thugs”. They made this choice because everything in their immediate world suggested that it was the best one. When an incident like this happens, it is easy to get angry and place blame. I commend you for being able to recognize that. Just because you are not placing blame on the criminal does not mean you are placing blame on the victim. People can keep saying “these are criminals, throw them in prison”, but crime continues to exist and this solution is reactive and not preventative, crime will continue to exist until we address the root of it. Thank you for recognizing that.

(2) Attacking your writing or your exposition. I’m not going to take too much time on this elementary logical fallacy (see “ad hominem”). People can have as many opinions as they want about how you presented this argument but at the base of it, it is a very necessary reflection. It is not how you presented it that is impressive, but the fact that you are ABLE to reflect on it this way. Coming from the privilege that you do, it is very easy to be sheltered and ignorant about the complex and uncomfortable conversation of what white-middle-class privilege means in America. For those who have tried to emasculate you for your opinion and not placing blame on the criminals, I would like to see how they would have acted in your situation. Maybe they would have whipped out their powerful boners and slapped some sense into those boys. Maybe they would have used their money and power to put these boys into prison. Maybe that would have made them feel “manly”. It is an embarrassment to our community that Hoyas continue to think like this. I am so incredibly proud to stand by you as a fellow Hoya who can understand what it means to embody “men and women for others”, because now that you understand this, perhaps one day you can bring more awareness to the under-funded conditions of inner city schools, support for more youth programs, and legislature that rehabilitates these children and prevents circumstances where crime is a likely option. Those who are ignorant can continue blaming children for their circumstances, waving around their penises, and making no difference.

Thank you for being brave enough to share your story and point-of-view. This is the type of conversation that will make a difference for society.

I’m glad that you and the author of the article have the “privilege” of telling everyone else that “we should get comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins”. Believe it or not, other victims of crime actually suffer as a result and thus do not have the luxury of telling a violent criminal that ““you are worth it and there is better out there for you, let me help you find a way out””. You’ve already helped them with several hundred dollars’ worth of your personal belongings and you have the audacity to imply that we owe them even more for their troubles.

> Maybe they would have whipped out their powerful boners and slapped some sense into those boys. Maybe they would have used their money and power to put these boys into prison. Maybe that would have made them feel “manly”. It is an embarrassment to our community that Hoyas continue to think like this.

Are you seriously suggesting that the only justification you can think of for our wanting to punish violent criminals is because we innocent victims want to “feel ‘manly'”?! Do you really think that’s the only basis we have for wanting the police to arrest individuals that are menacing members of our community? It’s certainly not just men that see armed muggings as a problem either (and no, we don’t want to “slap [them] with [our] powerful boners”) – in fact, I would very surprised to hear that women were totally okay with being attacked by a group of violent criminals at night. Muggers are a serious threat to the safety of any person in our community, including yourself and the author. Even if you do acquiesce and give up your property, you are still entirely at the mercy of demonstrably violent strangers who, with even an accidental twitch of the finger, could very easily end your life.

Aside from all that, the premise of this whole discussion is absurd. Would it still be okay if the muggers had attacked a student who turned out to be lower-class himself? Or would his inherent privilege of being a Georgetown student still make it understandable, even if he himself faced the same challenges as the muggers but chose to work hard and attend a great university with the help of financial aid and scholarships rather than hold up innocent victims on the street? The author also totally dismisses the police officer’s story about his own life and his rise above his unfortunate starting position to become a respectable officer of the law, with a real job helping real people. The officer himself faced the same choice of whether or not to commit violent crimes for drug money, and he made the right decision. Why does the author ignore his choice (and the choices of all of those hardworking students from low-income families) and concentrate on supporting the decisions of the muggers to commit a violent crime? The two of you both seem to be under the impression that socioeconomically-disadvantaged individuals cannot make the choice to rise above their circumstances and make the moral (and legal) choice. You write that “It was the robber’s choice to point that gun at you that night, but it is inequality in society that was responsible for those choices,” saying that while the mugger himself “chose” to commit the crime, he was not responsible for his choice. If you cannot be held responsible for your choices and your actions, then you are not making choices at all – you are simply following a linear path. The police officer and all of the students at Georgetown who have come from socioeconomically-disadvantaged backgrounds, however, prove this theory laughably false. People – even poor people – DO have choices and usually DO make the right ones. It is incredibly patronizing to suggest that muggings are excusable because poor people don’t have the privileged luxury of being moral.

>So, with the hopes of educating your critics

Sadly I doubt you’ll allow me to educate you while you wallow in your smug condescension, so I’ll just keep “waving around my penis” (along with the millions of women who agree with me, though that could be difficult for them) instead. If that’s all you get out of this exchange, unfortunately I suppose that’s a choice you have made (or have you?).

by enabling them, they’ll continue. If you correct them, they have a chance. It really comes down to their poor parenting they received. If poor was an excuse why are most poor not criminals? they have CHOICE in their actions.

His circumstances may not be (entirely) his fault, but his poor choices are. You should really consider how your condoning these kinds of poor choices contributes to and reinforces the circustances young people, like the robber in this story, face.

I hate to break your little rose-colored bubble Kimberly, but Oliver crying about his privilege after being robbed isn’t going to stop the under-funded conditions of inner city schools, lead to more support for youth programs, and create legislature that rehabilitates these children and prevents circumstances where crime is the only option.

It’s only going to make Oliver feel better about his brainwashed views on life.

Get a clue! No amount of “discussion” or “raising awareness” is going to end the cycle of poverty! It’s self-congratulatory nonsense and YOU KNOW IT! You and Oliver and the rest of your illiberals shouldn’t be patting yourselves on the back for posting these essay long replies like you’re changing the world or some BS; you should hand your heads in shame and shut up – unless you have any REAL solutions to the problem of muggings and other criminal activies.

Decades of failed Great Society programs like what you propose have had just the opposite effect – why keep proposing more failed programs? After school programs don’t save kids, intact nuclear families do.

3. Break Union stranglehold on schools by instituting voucher systems in all school districts with underperforming schools.

4. Streamline charter school registration and formation, making available empty government buildings for low rent.

5. Give principals authority to fire teachers for poor performance and reward teachers for good performance.

6. Minimize bureaucracy and spend money on creating jobs like CCC or WPA for infrastructure; in places like SF they spend $80-90k a year per homeless person but homeless still eat garbage and live in filth. But plenty of bureaucrats have jobs that pay well.

7. Reduce crushing regulatory burden (including Obamacare) on businesses allowing them to grow and hire more people, creating more jobs.

8. Control illegal immigration that lowers wages and floods market with low-skilled workers that take jobs traditionally performed by youth and unskilled and lower-educated people (often the minorities who then resort to crime).

The problem is that each of these solutions go against strong Democratic political supporters – public sector unions, immigration groups – so will never happen. If you minimize the number of people dependent on the government you also minimize the Democratic voter base who reliably vote for more free stuff.

So don’t expect real change. You won’t see any “Black leaders” carrying on campaigns against entitlements that destroy the Black family. You see, like here, calls for government “fixes” after the fact to repair what the lack of a strong family causes.

nice fresh perspective, but condoning violent mugging is entirely inappropriate. I had a couple friends who were mugged on 35th and N street, one had his nose pretty badly messed up; no one will deny these systemic inequalities need to be addressed, but approval of crime and violence is nowhere near conducive to a solution.

Oliver, look at the lively conversation your piece has started! The comments section has been so eyeopening for me (as I am sure it has been for you). It seems that some Georgetown students do not understand white privilege, classism, racism and other forms of structural oppression. And I do not have the energy (nor is it my job) to unpack all of these concepts. I would encourage all the commenters/readers who question your argument to do some actual RESEARCH rather than making useless remarks about your writing style/word choice. Here are some good reads to get you started:

“I would encourage all the commenters/readers who question your argument to do some actual RESEARCH rather than making useless remarks about your writing style/word choice.”

And I’d encourage you to get out in the real world. You sound like you’re currently in college. It may take years of living before you abandon the fairytales that college professors use to foward their worldview. If you’re black you may never let go of some of these fairytales because it would require you to face some uncomfortable truths about the black community. It’s blacks themselves, not white privilege, who are responsible for the pathologies within the black community.

Some of us understand those ideas perfectly well, but we recognize that that’s all they are: ideas. This whole concept of “privilege” (socioeconomic in this case – and despite your assumptions, the author never said that the attackers were black) is an intellectual framework for looking at the world, developed by some professors in recent years. It is NOT some immutable law of the universe that exists in a tangible way and was just discovered by these professors and now must be disseminated across the land. I certainly don’t mean this as a criticism of all non-STEM fields (I’m not even in a STEM field at all), but I do mean to rebuke your suggestion that those of us who disagree with your analysis of an event should “do some actual RESEARCH” (which you followed with a smug list of books with which we should “educate” ourselves), as if the only possible reason for disagreeing with you is not understanding the terms you’re using. Whether or not you buy into the idea of “white privilege” has nothing to do with how “educated” you are on the subject, and, more importantly, even those who recognize the existence of white privilege don’t have to believe that it absolves violent criminals of blame for their actions. In fact, I’d imagine that the majority of people who do buy into the idea of “white privilege” (explicitly or otherwise) would still disagree with the message of this article. I would be among them.

Actually, Oliver strikes me as a raging racist. By not assigning these individuals the same free will and responsibility for their actions he gives himself, he makes them less than him.

This entire article is a justification of why he is better than his attackers and dehumanizing them.

At least the commenters that want them justly punished are giving them the credit they deserve.

Also, by encouraging this attitude you are allowing this behavior to continue.

Anyone who points a gun at another human is dehumanizing them. The make their fellow humans prey. They need to be punished to learn better.

If you won’t teach them this, you are failing them.

All your privilege theory is just another way to hold them down, by excusing behavior that you wouldn’t excuse from those you see as privileged. You are the ones assigning privilege, not those to whom you assign that label.

“It seems that some Georgetown students do not understand white privilege, classism, racism and other forms of structural oppression.”

No, Kim, actually, it seems that you don’t understand that some people are just violent or damaged and it has nothing to do with any of the -isms that your professor taught you and you’re currently parroting. Newsflash: There are violent thugs who get their kicks out of mugging people and there are drug addicts looking to rob people to get money to score a hit. Both of these possible explanations for why Oliver got mugged are more likley than the intellectually bankrupt oppressed minority argument used to explain away minority pathologies in general and Oliver’s mugging in particular.

Verne, I will not respond to the racist, ageist etc assumptions you have made about my life and my experiences. You don’t know me. That aside, your comment illustrates exactly the point I was trying to make. Some people do not understand structural oppression! Oppression does not just affect minorities (Sexism, Apartheid, Slavery in many Latin American countries). Yes, there are, as you said, violent and damaged people but to label their actions as random and unexplainable seems more “intellectually bankrupt” to me. One thing I have learned from being brainwashed by academics is to analyze, look beyond the surface and tackle underlying issues. That is not easy and yes it is controversial but if you would take a look at the literature and the empirical evidence, with an open mind, I am sure you would find it to be relevant and stimulating. This would lead to a far more fruitful discussion, than your unsubstantiated claims, about me, the Black community (whatever that means), minorities (whatever that means), individuals with drug addictions and people with criminal records…

Your post hasn’t illustrated anything. you simply claim that you can have a more fruitful discussion by parroting the grievance-based, pseudo-intellectualism that gets you high marks from your professors.

You have not demonstrated an open mind. You’ve only demonstrated that you’ve swallowed PC culture whole and can repeat ‘check your privilege’ and ‘micro-agression’ on command.

Humans have free will and choice, no matter what their circumstances. When they break the laws we have agreed upon as a society, the ‘structural oppression’ you pedal is no excuse.

The reason most people ‘don’t understand’ your concept of structural oppression is that it is a luxury item. A way for you to pose as ‘speaking truth to power’ with no risk of repercussions. You know your imagined ‘patriarchy’ will pat you on the head and say, aww a ‘social justice warrior’, how cute.

It’s all an imagined construct for you to try and secure unearned power over people who will give it to you if you only inflict enough false guilt on them.

Which is why we have people like poor Oliver, who has been (re)educated into thinking he owes his attackers something. The only thing his attackers are owed is punishment for their illegal actions.

You make them out to be some kind of nobel savages that require you to analyze the world for them and win them justice by brining down a bunch of imaginary oppressors.

You and the writer do them great injustice by treating them as inferiors and expecting so little of them. They deserve, as our equals, to be held responsible for their illegal behavior.

It seems like the writer of this piece and a lot of the commenters that support him are making assumptions about the muggers in this example. That they are “structurally oppressed,” that they “had to entertain the thought” of getting a gun to mug people in order to survive. Maybe they were stealing your stuff to buy beer, or drugs, or more guns. Maybe they work during the day and mug at night for electronics and credit cards. You assume this was a crime borne out of inequality and need, but there is nothing to say it wasn’t born out of greed or something else.
MAYBE a lot of things, but the bottom line is that they are violent criminals and you are lucky you escaped unscathed. People have been killed in the area you were walking in incidents not unlike yours:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/09/AR2006070900215.html

The people who did rob you are violent and should be arrested because they are a threat to everyone. No crime is OK.

So being middle class is a class priviledge? Why are you categorizing people by having them check priviledge boxes? Do I have to check my religion, language, intelligence, attractiveness, popularity privilidge now as well? So if anyone is different in any way its a priviledge. Here’s something you all miss, if you are reading this article check your “being in America priviledge in 2014”. 99.9% of all people who have ever lived on this planet have not had as good as you bunch of whiners.

Oliver
My experience was a little different. I was standing on a Chicago EL platform inebriated after knocking back a few pints with my mates and was confronted by two black thugs in hoodies that were also a bit younger than me. They proceed to beat me almost to death breaking 3 ribs, shattering my left eye socket and rupturing an eardrum. I was only saved from being pushed onto the tracks below when another group of riders came up the platform and started recording the beating on their cell phones. The two thugs who did this were bad people and their problems with life had nothing to do with me. I now have diminished hearing in one ear and permanently blurred vision in one eye. Did I deserve this because I was born to a union steel worker? Do I still have to check the white priviledge box now even after the beating.
I think you are confused about right and wrong and personal responsibility. Your robbers are completely responsible for their actions. For you to marginalize that is to infantilize your attackers. When you get beaten up like I did will you be saying to yourself “yeah I totally deserve this and these guys arent bad people” while you roll around in pain in your own blood. Good luck with that.

^ Way to be compassionate and sympathetic, Mo. Apparently, the only people deserving of sympathy are the underprivileged ones.

Said it elsewhere on this thread and I’ll say it again – the REAL racism/classism is holding people of certain races/classes to lower moral standards. Understanding that there are cultural elements and underlying causes at play are one thing – but dismissing someone’s downright terrifying and life-threatening experience in the name of social justice is against the very justice you’re trying to fight for.

The guy who teaches this “white privilege” stuff, teaches a course at Harvard Online, HarvardX. The guy is a white guy from Pasadena, the most elite white privilege city in Los Angeles, just a few miles from Occidental College, where another White elitist went to college. You can watch the course online for free. I heard a couple of his lectures and burst out laughing. The guy is a communist – the guy who got mugged is also a communist – and doubtful he ever got mugged, because believe me, a mugging usually shakes you up pretty bad. Everytime you are mugged, there is a chance you’re going to die. This guy knows nothing about being mugged or about life on the street. If he really wants to cleanse himself of white privilege, go move into the projects and get to know everybody. I’m sure they’ll be thrilled.

I worked hard to get into a good university. I studied, worked to earn spending money, and now I’ve graduated. I have a decent job and I pay taxes. Those thugs have done none of the above. Now tell me again why they are entitled to hurt innocent people. I’m waiting for your reply.

So this is what a $60,000 a year education at Georgetown gets you. Sounds like Georgetown has been “mugging” you for years. No wonder a couple of thugs robbing you on the street doesn’t phase you in the least..

I am much older than you and I have grown up in a different era of time. I see life through a different set of lenses than you do. I suppose that’s why, after reading your article, I do not understand much of what you’ve said. It makes no sense to me. What I do know, however, is had you been shot or beaten into unconsciousness and lived in a wheelchair the rest of your life paralyzed from the waist down, you would not have even attempted to write this article. But, because that didn’t happen, you are now privileged to write and roam about the country. Yes, you are privileged only because a catastrophic event didn’t happen to you. Had one occurred, your mental, emotional and physical well being would have taken a turn that you never would have imagined. I’ve seen tragedy in my lifetime and no one who has ever lived through such an event is ever the same. I dare say that you would not have blamed such a tragedy on something you call “white privilege”.

It is fascinating indeed that you have made an attempt to ask your readers to see life through the eyes of other people who accosted you. To see them as a victim of society all caused by something I can’t explain and understand, something called “white privilege”. I admit, I don’t really know what it is.

Oliver, what you have shown me is your lack of understanding. Not only of society in general, but of who you are, what your destiny is, what your purpose in life is. If “white privilege” is such a societal demon as you claim, then it is only fair to ask you what you have done to solve the problem. Your article makes no mention of any life application on your part, it only tries to blame others. I suggest that you be willing to give up your life style and go live with those who suffer from the deadly effects of “white privilege”. Move in with your attackers and reeducate them into your new way of life and enlightenment. Live their life. Stop your privileged education. Be one of them.

Please don’t think that I don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve gone to other countries and lived with the poor, the destitute and the hopeless. If you aren’t willing to become like one of them, you’re only empty words. Until you are willing to give up your privileged way of life, Oliver, and demonstrate what you’ve written, you’re just a sounding gong banging in the wind. Don’t demonstrate how to be a hypocrite…show others you know what you’re talking about.

Here’s an idea. Drop of out of Georgetown, go to a state school that costs less than half the $60,000 cost of Georgetown, give the $30,000 saved to the poor kids you feel so badly about so they won’ t have to rob you or others. Win win!

I was driving a 1974 Chevy til 1993. That year a bought a used, but looked new, Volvo wagon. It was first decent car I had in my life. I got out of work my first day driving it, one of my two jobs, and the back window had been punched in. I was devastated. The author may have white privilege, myself, I had white work your ass of for everything. Don’t drag working whites into your privilege, call it rich privilege and leave me and my calloused hands out of your guilt.

Oliver perhaps you can do more to help the disadvantaged youth who really had no choice but to mug you. How about sharing your other possessions which were not available during your encounter. How about your lovers contribution. You can and should do more.

Holy cra…someone please take Oliver’s keyboard away from him. This kind of idiocy should not be allowed to exist.

Hyperbole aside, after spending a few years in the real world Mr. Friedfeld will have a radically different outlook. Unless of course he gets himself killed doing something insanely stupid, which is not all that unlikely.

This is the most obnoxious, sanctimonious loads of crap I’ve ever read. Seriously, if you’re this guilt ridden, dropout of school,
Go live in the hood, and assuage that mental illness. Or just shoot yourself in the head.

In so many ways, it’s a shame that they didn’t beat the daylights out of this young fool. I say that because, as a student in the School of Foreign Service, he may very well someday bring this astonishing level of foolishness into the service of our nation. If being mugged in reality doesn’t qualify for him as being mugged by reality, then keep him far, far away from any responsibility.

You are sad and I pity you. Here’s why: being poor does not exempt one from law or basic civility just because they cannot afford whatever it is they desire . No. You are practicing on full display the bigotry of low expectation, you really do not believe they are capable of more than hood rat behavior, and you believe they shouldn’t be held accountable because of that.

I’m sure in the cushy little well funded world you reside in , this kind of thinking makes you feel all warm and fuzzy. I live in reality, and so do most people. Be the change you want, sir. Give away all YOUR money and belongings. Do it, then come back and write this kind of article. Oh wait, you won’t. Spare us all the vomit inducing moral vanity. Thanks.

Mr. Friedfeld’s position perpetuates criminal behavior and assures that the criminals he enountered will go on to exact additional crimes against other innocent victims. His lack of awareness for his surroundings and his subsequent capitulation emboldens the criminals. But let’s face the truth here…Mr. Friefeld’s article is his way of coping with his fears and cowardice. It’s his cheap excuse as he wrestles with the fact the he did not fight back and it is his way of coping with his low standing in Darwin’s continuum. Naivete is bliss until reality comes knocking! Marche ou creve, mon vieux.

What a lovely world this would be if savage animals only preyed upon savage animal enablers. I’d have no problem with imbeciles who believe they have Black Immunity only mugging imbeciles who believe they have White Privilege. Truly made for each other.

My family and I have been profoundly impacted by several violent crimes. My brother’s mother-in-law was murdered in a fatal mugging. The mugger pushed my brother’s mother-in-law backwards while trying to rip the purse from her arm. She fell backwards and hit her head, and died shortly afterwards. As someone who has been profoundly impacted by crime, I find this article beyond insulting. In fact I think this article borders on the obscene, and is a direct and personal insult to crime victims everywhere.

The “author” of this self-loathing, racial hit-piece is pathetic. It’s not the “thug’s fault.” “It’s my fault…because I was born white…and my great-great-grandfather was mean to his great-great-grandfather.” “It’s my fault because these pieces of worthless human debris think that hard work and dedication to bettering one’s self” is for suckas. “I would be happy to lay down my life so that they can steal my money and electronics.”

Explain to me for one moment…where this sort of stupid comes from? You have to ask yourself…what sort of insipid, moronic asshats teach this sort of mind-numbing BS–and worse yet, who actually believes them? These thugs are just that. They are thugs. Scumbags. Period. They are about as capable of changing themselves as you are of changing your DNA. They believe in preying upon the weak. They believe in handouts from the government. They believe in instant gratification at the expense of others. They don’t respect the rule of law or the law of the land. They expect handouts from this day…until the day that they die.

This pathetic, hand-wringing example of self-loathing is a clear example of what too much marijuana as an undergrad will do to you. I’m still betting that the author still lives in his parents’ basement and honestly believes that Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown were innocent victims. Simply wow.

You have a vague notion that muggings are somehow “fueled” by condemnation of muggings? It would be interesting to see you try and connect the dots there. To hand over your money and write an article saying it’s all okay, that actually “fuels” the problem.

If only there were some sort of federal/state/city program available for these poor youths to take advantage of. Just one. Why has no one in government ever proposed or created one simple program with the intent of ending economic inequality? Is it that hard? We really need our political class to stand up and fight for the creation of government funded programs that will end economic inequality. Oliver, you should run for office on a platform of helping the poor. It hasn’t been done before and you sound like just the right guy to actually get elected fighting for the disadvantaged. It’s hard getting elected promising people things, and the media will surely laugh at you for it. But if we can just get a program funded, just one, we can begin to fight a war on poverty. War on Poverty!! There you go, that could be your campaign theme? Why has no one thought of this before?

There *are* programs for these youths to take advantage of. They are called public schools and higher institutions of learning.

They prepare people like Oliver to be targets for these young men.

I suspect that Oliver will be out on the street soon with a new phone and pocket full of cash, perhaps with several similarly-equipped friends eager for a similar experience, to provide these disadvantaged youths with more opportunities to interact with Oliver and give him insights and experiences into his role in oppressing the masses.

Oliver, Shame on you. And shame on this publication for permitting such racist thoughts. You are saying that people of color who are criminals — like the ones that mugged you — can’t help themselves because they are different (i.e., “inferior.”) Shame on you.

Believe it or not, and despite your insistence of inferiority, people of color are completely capable of restraining themselves from criminal conduct.

Wonderful. Another Foreign Service Officer who essentially dislikes the country he wants to represent and wants to be paid to live in another country on the taxpayer’s dime while essentially hating those who fund his traitorious, though luxurious, lifestyle. He’ll fit in perfectly with the DoS.

This article is disgusting, and here’s why: Oliver’s cheerful application of situational ethics tells me that *he* would be on the other end of that gun and mugging people if he found himself down on his luck. He has rationalized criminal behavior in others, and would engage in the very same behavior himself. The Jesuits must be proud.

Oliver needs to find a job at McDonald’s; the Foreign Service needs some normal people, not more nitwit loons. By his measure, nearly the entire population of the US was a criminal during the Great Depression. Self-righteous, ignorant and fool are the components of Liberalism, and he has them all.

“othering”. Seriously? They ARE criminals because they commited a crime, you nitwit. And a violent crime at that, hence “thug”.

Newsflash, he didn’t mug you because of “othering” (most ridiculous term ever, btw), he mugged you because he is poor and decided he had little other options. Instead of sniffing your own farts and “”opening a dialog to examine how “othering” has contributed to this situation”” maybe you aught to look at the real reason why he’s poor with no options. Look at how our social programs keep him poor.

As much as you feel enlightened and intelligent for your thesis here, YOU are part of his problem for enabling and condoning the forces (outside of his poor decisions) that are responsible for his circumstances.

You are a naive fool and a Mercedes Marxist in training. Your professors should be fired, an investigation should be started to root out the marxists gasbags running the departments at Georgetown, and you have no business working in any capacity for the people of the United States.

Clearly, you need further and more serious mugging to clear your kind of the mush you are vomiting out as projected policy.

In his effort to appear as not a racist, he exposes his racism in the fact that he believes thug and black are synonymous. What’s truly disgusting is that he accuses the rest of us who do NOT see it that way as being the ones with racial bias. It is seriously troubling to me that these are the thoughts of someone who is an educated, rational adult.

In the same vein, he could have decided your girlfriend/spouse/significant other was better looking than his and decided to ‘take’ that as well. This was a simple little process for you to accept when it was of trivial value. What if it was something you deeply cared for?

“The millennial generation is taking over the reins of the world, and thus we are presented with a wonderful opportunity to right some of the wrongs of the past.”

Perhaps you should concentrate on the future and understand leadership and its responsibilities. Good luck in future endeavors, spending loads of time, effort and money righting the past. That has no value. It’s simply symbolism over substance.
Best,
Chris

How in the world did they know you had “white privilege”? Did they interview you or something? My white privilege came in the form of living in my car for a few months, then joining the military, then engaging in some lovely combat actions, then getting honorably discharged, going to college, and applying and getting a job, where I still make less than $100k a year in the DC area (not poor, but not wealthy either).

I love how you play out that the thugs are victims and somehow justified in their actions, because of some BS of “white privilege”, when in fact these thugs broke the law, and sorry to tell you, there are many white people who are rather poor and/or work their ass off to get where they at and making money now.

So what,these thugs instead of getting a job and getting a phone, you think we should just accept they still one? Only in your delusional mind is this ever acceptable. Those thugs should be locked away for a few years, as to never put anyone in danger.

I love how folks like Mo keep trotting out the long-discredited “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” piece; I first came across it years ago on a university faculty “diversity commission” (many, many “Arghs!” were involved in that endeavor). I advise people with any interest in the subject to read it to understand how flimsy and unscientific the whole notion of “white priviledge (er, sorry Mo, “privilege”) is. It’s not terribly long or intellectually rigorous.

I actually did unpublished research to rebut it in 2007 for some committee work. It simply was not worth time publishing as serious work, although I did publish something on a site (Chronwatch.com) that is now defunct.

If you read the 50 points in “Unpacking” you will recognize that most are simply untrue in today’s world (i.e., “1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.”) Yet it is still pointed to as the definitive work on the subject of “white privilege” by the faithful, as we have seen here.

Common sense reflection shows that the first point, as most if not all, of “Unpacking” is untrue. The majority of Americans live in cities with racially and culturally diverse populations, and virtually every workplace is integrated. Classrooms are integrated. Sporting events are integrated. Streets are integrated. Restaurants are integrated. Mass transit is integrated. It would be very difficult to arrange to be in the company of only people of your race – unless, of course, you are unemployed and living in a subcultural island with little contact with the external society (“ghetto”) or are an invalid/shut-in. As such, this might well apply to other races and subcultures that have created niche societies within neighborhoods and where people have chosen to spend their time cut off from the larger society. This is not unique to America; travelers to other countries are familiar with such subcultural communities there (indeed, the word “ghetto” originated in Italy).

I divide my time now between our home in Arizona and my practice in the SF Bay Area. I am about as white as you can get, but I am in a racially-mixed marriage and have a racially-mixed child (how I used to love asking in diversity committee meetings, when my whiteness was raised to disqualify my opinion, “How many here are in mixed marriages, raise your hands? Anyone? Just me? Oh.”) My town in Arizona is more white by percent than my home in California, but even if I stay at home I cannot be in the company of people of my race most of the time. Where in America today is this possible? What percentage of the population lives where there is a majority of white folk where you can spend your days surrounded by pale skin?

You can go through each of the 50 points of “Unpacking” just like this. I actually contacted the publisher of “Highlights” magazine for kids and they sent me copies of all their magazines so I could go through and note the inclusion of minority children in pictures. Off the top of my head, I believe that they had minority kids represented from almost the first issue.

One of the points in “Unpacking” is particularly interesting given the presidency of Barack Obama: “23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.” The president, AG Eric Holder, and many other Democrats and pundits have claimed that any criticisms of the president’s policies were because of his skin color. Ironic that this is considered a indicator of “white privilege” in “Unpacking” yet now is reversed and is seen as racism AGAINST the government because the president is black.

So I agree with Mo that people should read “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” to understand how hollow and intellectually vacuous the concept of white privilege is.

Mo
So is there Asian priviledge and Latino priviledge? How is it possible that people move to this country with nothing and a generation later their children are graduating from college and working in jobs making more than $100,000?
You are just pointing out two types of people and it really it is indifferent to class, race, sex or religion: There are with 1) “motivated personally responsible to get ahead in this world priviledged” and 2) “not motivated to get ahead in this world just depend on others and complain about it priviledge”

Everyone living in this country has “USA Priviledge” and are part of the top 1% on this planet. The poorest US citizens have cable, cell phones, wide screen tv’s and internet. The average income of the rest of the world is about $1200 a year while the poverty level in the USA is defined as 23,383 for two adults and two children.

Capitalism and freedom in this country allows anyone with an ounce of motivation and personal responsibility to live a comfortable life even in poverty. If you disagree try living off the dole in Brazil for a while. You’ll book a ticket to the USA happy to check your USA Priviledge to get back in.

I suggest you read some Paolo Freire. You will learn about the American Dream you have so foolishly bought into and projected upon the people around you.

You have clearly demonstrated that your understanding of economics is rooted in utter horse sh*t. Poverty lines are based upon the amount it costs to live in a particular country. They vary, because it costs different amounts of money to live in different places. Write that down, dear boy, lest you forget.

Have you every interacted with a poor US citizen? The poorest US citizens are struggling to feed their children. They are not living large, as you seem to believe. Do you know how many grocery stores exist east of the Anacostia River? The poorest US family does not have a car. The poorest US family will pay to take a bus to buy milk at a convenience store, where there is mark-up that you will not experience at your local Safeway. You silly , silly fool.

Your assertion that living a comfortable life requires “an ounce of motivation and personal responsibility” is the most offensive thing I’ve heard today. Let’s say that you are born in an underserved American neighborhood. Your “ounce” of motivation is chewed up and spat out by systems that consistently fail you.

I would like you to embark on a bit of a reflective exercise. Who are the people in your life that enabled you to be here right now? What are the structures that enabled you to be here right now? Are there sources of social capital that you possess that you did not earn or work for? In terms of the sources of social capital that you supposedly “earned,” let’s revisit the first two questions. Did you really earn your current position? Do you deserve, more than anyone else, to be present? If you had grown up in an underserved American neighborhood, think about what your “normal” would be, what your fears would be, and what people would expect of you.

For the sake of my own sanity, I pray that I avoid the distinct displeasure of coming across your person.

I will not be thankful for your brash, offensive ignorance this holiday season, my dear poor misguided William.

Mo…you are an indoctrinated fool. How dare you label every individual under one flag based solely on the color of their skin! That’s racism. I’m sure you excuse yourself because your idiot professors told you that only those in power can be racist. Newsflash…they made that up to excuse their own racism. As an independent critical thinking individual, you’re free to ignore them. And how dare you demean another’s hard work….”How do you think you got that “less than 100K, more than not poor” job, by the way?” He did it himself, not because of any privilege. You too can succeed if you stop your racism and excusinig your apparent inadequacies on others, and embrace self-determination and hard work. But, I’m sure it’s easier to live in your fantasy land where white people are handed jobs and degrees without earning them, but that’s not reality. Grow up.

Please see my response to William. No one succeeds on their own. Your shamefully ignorant rhetoric (that absolutely reeks of your lack of experience with ANYONE who has less than you) is rhetoric of the oppressor, rhetoric used to justify oppression and maintain an unjust system.

I demean no one’s hard work, but let me assure you, that success is achieved by hard work combined with social and political structures that enable your success.

While no one succeeds on their own, the gross societal structures that assist are available to all no matter race, color or creed in America – the cultural, economic and political structure (unfortunately being “fundamentally transformed” by the current president). The social structure is composed of a broader culture shared by all (but capable of being rejected) and subcultures. The basic subcultural subunit is the family. What liberals refuse to recognize when they spout the “you didn’t build this” and “it takes a village” memes is that the liberal “Great Society” and “War on Poverty” have undermined the family unit within certain Black subcultural loci (which Daniel Patrick Moynihan warned about in 1965). Rather than accept that their well-intentioned (and racist, but that is a theme for another day) attempts to help have destroyed the Black nuclear family and removed the support to enable Black youths to succeed. So to excuse lack of results due to this removal of an integral support element, they posit this invisible and unverifiable element of “white privilege.”

Your “white priviledge” 😉 shtick is tiresome. The intellectually vacuous who still pathetically point to “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” when each premise is so historically flawed in 2014 (as it was in 2009 when I first encountered it, as it was in 1988 when Peggy McIntosh first penned her tirade against white males) have to have an intellectual disconnect on par with the crowd in “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” It is based, as is so much pseudo-sociology of the Left, on a flawed and incoherent understanding of history and people. It assumes so much, and betrays the bigotry and racism of the white author. Let’s look at this woman, Ms. McIntosh, you evidently hold in such esteem that you have asked people twice that I have seen in this comments thread to read her “seminal” work (is that sexist?).

Look at her second point. Her “Unpacking” works like a Jeff Foxworthy routine; if you find yourself agreeing with most of these points, you are the recipient of white privilege (and are probably a redneck to boot). But consider the dark racist underbelly of her statement itself, and what it reveals about Ms. McIntosh herself, not about the white privileged class she so despises:

“2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.”

“Trained to mistrust?” Gosh, don’t know about you, Peggy, but I wasn’t trained to distrust anyone. OK, that’s a lie. Carnies. Don’t trust carnies. And traveling vacuum salespeople. But that’s about it. What does it say about a person who broadly believes that all whites are trained to mistrust blacks? Where is her empirical data to back that claim? Where is her common sense? Where is the common sense of someone today citing this piece after Barack Obama was elected twice to the presidency? Yeah, whitey sure has been trained to distrust the Black man.

And what about the double standard here – whites have been “trained” to mistrust the “other”, but Blacks have “learned” to mistrust whites (my kind) – or me? How can Ms. McIntosh possibly know that? What is this associate director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women basing this claim on?

Can we begin to see the intellectual poverty of this “white privilege” foundational document?

Moving on.

“3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live.”

Now, I hope most people look at that and scratch their heads. Remember, this is from an article originally written in 1988. Not 1958. Not 1968. 1988. And proudly and authoritatively pointed to by Mr. Mo today in 2014.

This is not a nuanced argument that might leave some room for discussion, regarding possible factors in some markets with some lenders (and loan officers) relating to qualifications for loans and red lining and such. Most studies I am aware of in the area of housing show that when factors such as employment, collateral, job history, credit score, etc. are balanced, race and ethnicity are not a factor in qualification. Ms. McIntosh appears to assume these factors are not in play (I suspect this level of analysis is beyond her).

No, what she says is that if you have the money (cash or qualified loan) you must be white privileged if you can rent or buy anywhere you can afford. Let’s look at the converse – you cannot be certain you can buy anywhere you want unless you are white.

Soooo… Georgetown is pretty lily white. A little over 85% white. How did those 14%+ non-whites sneak in? My theory is that they had the money and bought/rented homes and apartments. No one told them they couldn’t in one of the most exclusive places to live in America.

Beverly Hills, CA. About 89% white. Somehow about 11% of non-whites were allowed to buy or rent homes there without “white privilege.” Mill Valley, CA, where I practice, pretty white place, 89% white, but 11% non-whites are still able to rent or buy if they can afford it.

Aha! The small numbers prove that not everyone who wants to can move there because of skin color, right? Sorry, I’m playin’ witcha. Notice anything? These are all liberal bastions. Go up the road from Mill Valley to Vacaville one county over and whites drop to 66%. A lot fewer liberals in Vacaville, a lot less money. A lot more minorities. Hmmmm.

The point is that people with common sense know that a Black orthodontist with good credit and money in the bank can buy any house she or he can afford anywhere they want today. They won’t have any flaming lower-case t’s in their yard (for you South Park fans). It is not white privilege, it is money privilege. It used to be called “the American Dream.” Now it’s called elusive for most everyone.

“6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.”

Again, for anyone who as paid attention for the last decade or three, the answer to this is that whether you are Caucasian, African-American, Hispanic or Asian or whatever flavor of the wondrous variety of humanity, you can find yourself in the media. For grins I just flipped through the first fifty channels of the TV. Counting voices on cartoons (with three kids and three grandkids I *know* cartoon voice actors, so don’t play the voice prejudice card on me!), discounting animal documentaries (“behold the wondrous penguin”), and animated soap bubbles, 35 out of 45 had non-white actors in the five seconds I allowed myself to view each channel. See how I sacrifice for you?

Again, it defies common sense to claim that only whites get to see their race widely represented in the media. OK, the hosts of MSNBC are predominantly white makes, I get that. But in those fifty channels I surfed, three were in Spanish, one was BET, and two had black comedies (not BET). That’s at a random moment I got up and turned the TV on. Hardly scientific, but enough to make my point.

Advertisers and casting directors want to use people of color. One of my clients was from Iran. He had two beautiful young granddaughters who were sought after by advertisers because their almond skin and exotic features could be taken for a number of races. I dare say that if you pick up any clothing ad you will find a veritable Colors of Benetton potpourri of races and many of those unidentifiable “What race is she?” models who could be any race – handy!.

For years now each movie or TV group of friends had to have a Black, a Hispanic and a White kid (as did gangs). Bosses had to be Black; judges usually were Black and a woman. In the 1970s, movies and TV shows often used a Black in an authority figure but kept the role as a minor one, in effect saying, “Look, the Captain is Black, see how progressive we are, now let’s focus on the two white cops.” Now we expect that roles are given with a nod to racial diversity as part of the plot structure (in “Psych”, the racial diversity gave plot twists that would not have been there is both friends had been black or white).

We see an interesting social evolutionary comparison in the re-imagining of the forced racial quotas of Gene Roddenberry’s original “Star Trek” series with the new movies; it no longer is a bold statement (such as Uhura’s kissing Kirk, the first scripted interracial kiss on TV), but simply an organic and natural thing, something we live with and experience in our lives. It’s hard to imagine how daring this was back in 1966.

This is why Ms. McIntosh’s point is so vacuous. Of course people of different races can see their races in print and TV. Maybe Samoans cannot see Samoans in the papers or on TV often, but do they really expect that? They represent .056% of our population. I suppose every time they see Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson they are getting their percentage worth.

One of the special super-secret, I’m smirking at you because you don’t get it things about “white privilege” believers is that it is so invidious and invisible and pervasive that you as a white person cannot see it or feel it or understand it. Only the white people who know it is there and point it out to you and lecture you about it can see it. Like the Emperor’s New Clothes, don’t you know. If you argue against it, it is because you are too stupid to see it. There is no science, no empirical data. There is no common sense, because you cannot apply common sense to these statements.

“Wait, how do you explain that you say Blacks cannot see images of themselves in the media but they can? How do you explain that you say Whites can live their lives only living with other Whites and not seeing other races when that is impossible unless they are shut-ins?”

Their answer?

“You’re White and stupid, so you just don’t understand. And you’re a racist. Hands up, don’t shoot!”

Thank you Lester (below) for breathing common sense into this conversation. The Invisible Knapsack is so outdated that I find it surprising that liberals continue to trot it out as if it still means something.

Thanks, Holly. This actually coaxed me out of my lethargy (and too much work in the real world, admittedly) and got me writing a little more in depth on the subject at http://wp.me/p4Q7xq-S.

One of the things that I find so frightening is that a) Oliver is apparently a senior and b) he is in the School of Foreign Service. People have been applying his logic to rape and murder; in his future vocation, he could be applying this to ISIS.

everyone who believes in politically correct schwag like “white privilege” is either suffering from white guilt or an inferiority complex. “white privilege” is just the race industry’s way of saying, “If you’re white, you’re racist, no matter what you do or say.” it’s the stuff of tiny minds who can’t take responsibility for their own lives, just like you schmuck-o.

Mo.
“Everyone who is white, has white privilege”. Well, in the face that circular non-reasoning…

People of colour do have privilege, especially Asian Americans whose median household income eclipses that of every other group (Pew). That is, if you assume that having lots of money is being privileged (that’s a pretty damn good definition).

“Systemic racism” – look it up. Ok, it’s a shifting, nebulous term that can be capriciously applied to anything anywhere. “New term for you”. What hubristic, patronizing nonsense.

Yes white privilege exists but there’s no sound excuse for criminals to steal from anyone. Stop blathering on with this overly indoctrinated crap and your condescending links and whatever the heck you learned in some corrupt college classroom USE YOUR BRAIN MO! (whatever’s left of it)

For white privilege to be a meaningful concept it must universally apply to all whites in the US equally. Are you prepared to make that argument?

Or are you saying that under some circumstances it is advantageous to be white in the US?

I would agree with that. And that under some circumstances it is advantageous to be a black man; if you become president, no one can even make jokes about you for a few years because of fear of being called racist. Now THAT is privilege!

It is also advantageous in some circumstances to be a pretty girl. In other circumstances that would be a deadly danger.

As a predictor of success in education and financially in life, being Asian might be seen as advantageous. If you apply to UC Berkeley it can be disadvantageous because of their quotas (too many Asians).

There are many opportunities open to minorities not open to whites. That is a form of privilege.

The poor while child in Appalachia who has a poor education, no money, no prospects, surely has no privileges greater than the black senator’s son in Georgetown who goes to Sidwell Friends and Harvard.

White privilege sounds like it could be a real thing but only if you don’t examine it too closely in the real world.

Mo, you speak in absolutes which are not logically applied. If all caucasians have privelege how does that explain the general poverty found in Appalachia, which is 95 percent caucasian? If “people of color” (a nasty racist term), do not have privelege, how does that explain Tiger Woods, Bill Cosby, Spike Lee, Patrice Motsepe, Barak Obama, Charles Rangel, Papa Doc Duvallier, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, OJ Simpson, Robert L. Johnson, Herman Cain, and Oprah Winfrey?

Oliver, you’re a racist tool and your expensive education has been entirely wasted. You were mugged because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time and ran into the wrong people…thugs with no conscience who CHOSE to rob you because they are bad people. Good people don’t hold up people at gunpoint. Bad people do. It’s really that simple, and your attitude that it’s not the robbers’ fault is condescending at best and racist at worse, and a PERFECT example of limousine liberalism.

You (and everyone else on the planet) has ALWAYS had to choose whether or not to steal. Every time you go to a store and choose to pay for your items, you’re choosing not to steal.

“Otherization” is not a word.

Between you and the ridiculous Sandra Fluke, Georgetown students are really not looking too intelligent these days.

Oliver, if the logic of your argument were applied to the issue of rape, then we would say that rape culture can be used to justify individual rapes and that “until we [change rape culture], we should get comfortable with sporadic [rapes] and [sexual assaults].”

And I’m assuming you wouldn’t agree with the logical conclusion of your argument as it is applied to the issue of rape.

Ok, well thanks for this gratuitous self congratulatory pat on your own back. I’m not going to call you any names or say you’re a bad person or anything because I don’t believe in internet trolls, and I’m sure you’re a good person but seriously, think dude? I’m a liberal and this article is barf worthy. I was attacked twice, once by two guys who grabbed me and held me down, and though I will never know what they actually wanted because some witnesses came by, I believed they wanted to do something sexually to me in some way, and another time, a man held a knife to my stomach. There is NOTHING fucking funny or ok with this. It is unacceptableable. I think you need to refocus whatever it is you were trying to get at with this article getting back to the Mike Brown case and redirecting the attention from your misguided self. Btw, since I don’t believe in internet trolls, my name is Jessie Richardson and you’re welcome to email me any time if you have a response. jkrollllllin@yahoo.com.

Anyone this stupid shouldn’t own a phone, or money, or do anything but sign up for a program where someone else takes care of them because they’re clearly never going to survive on their own.

So taking your money and phone and letting you clarify you’re incapable of being a rational human is good; at least you learn this now, and not after you decide you can fly and jump out a window… or wander in traffic looking for a clue.

This very silly column assumes that only rich people can afford moral agency, while poor people are but robots who can only do what their circumstances dictate. It is the sort of cocooned liberal condescension one might see Thurston Howell III spout on Gilligan’s Island, in his parody of the effete rich. It is far funnier when delivered with such earnesty.

Hang on, are you claiming minorities have free will and the ability to take independent action like a white person?
How RACIST are you? Every good non-racist knows minorities don’t have free will, and can only react and never have an independent thought or action.
Only white people have free will. You’re racist to think otherwise.

** Yes that’s a stupid argument, but oddly it explains the undefined premises of many liberal arguments quite accurately **

When I was at Northwestern, someone wrote a similarly reviled op ed piece for our paper. It was about how auditioning and turning down a callback for the “girl of the Big 10” edition of Playboy was super empowering to her. This is weirdly similar in terms of the tonedeafness only reserved for 20 year olds totally oblivious to the fact that they’re highlighting their privilege by trying to say how they’re better than it.

I am 45 years old and I, like the author, went to an elite university. Unlike the author, I have the advantage of maturity and real-world experience. Son, I hope that you grow up and realize how utterly ridiculous you sound now.

AMEN to that…I have been in Africa and Asia for the last 10 years, I have seen REAL poverty, inequality, Gov’t Corruption, Racism. Almost NO opportunity to improve your station in life in a lot of these countries. It’s not luck that All Americans have opportunities to improve their station in life, its our Political (Constitution, Bill of Rights, strong military) and Economic System (Free Market) that does it. Unfortunate that those institutions are being torn down

You want to help poor communities that breed crime; go volunteer in a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter. Donate clothing to your local Salvation Army or a church. Participate in projects like Habitat for Humanity to build up a home and help a family in need. That’s what a REAL liberal minded person would do, not this “woe is me, I’m privileged” crap that passes as liberalism these days.

Dear white liberal student, I know it feels good to hate yourself and your culture. I used to be a liberal too. And I know the serotonin filled joy of self-flagellation. Of despising your civilisation, your background, the hard work of your parents and their parents before them, stretching back generations. There is nothing that feels better than taking the moral righteous high ground at the expense of yourself and those closest to you. It is the ultimate in self sacrifice. With the influence of Christian culture taking the blame is written into our very cultural DNA. There is no-one more admirable than the guy who takes the fall for the sins of others.

But here’s the thing. It’s wrong. It’s completely and utterly wrong and wrong-headed. As a liberal you must defend the principles of liberalism. The rule of law, the social contract, the social capital that is built up through generations of people working together in harmony for common goals. Criminals break all bonds of social behaviour. They neither know of, nor care about, the hard won principles of civilisation. Who are you to condemn it? Well, who are you NOT to condemn it? Who do you think you are to give away the principles of civilisation so cheaply? Who are you to normalize muggings and violence and to shrug your shoulders as if they are nothing? The social contract relies on both supporting its principles and on the censoring of those who break them.

Civilisation is not a “privilege” that has arrived by magic. It is not a cheap and tawdry gift that brings only embarrassment to its holders. When the West falls it will be you and your kind who enable it to happen because you treated something so precious with such disdain.

Billions of people in Asia and Africa are successfully lifting themselves out of dire poverty without having to rob people at gunpoint.

Yet in America, the 1% – and the poorest Americans are the world’s richest 1% – with their free education, food, shelter, sanitation and freedom to do anything they choose – are expected to be violent and stupid.

Because privilege.

A poor Indian with no running water can and often ends up in Silicon Valley through hard work. But a thug in the wealthiest nation in history – who has the wherewithal to get a gun – is not expected to know how to study or work.

Cannot remember who did the piece years ago, but someone did a thought experiment on an Egyptian pharaoh in a 7-11 comparing the wealth of the pharaohs to what we have available to the poorest today, starting with the glass windows, front door, lights, air conditioning, refrigeration, through the food items, etc.

Of course there are also the work of James Q. Wilson, cited by the Heritage Foundation:

“The poorest Americans today live a better life than all but the richest persons a hundred years ago.” In 2005, the typical household defined as poor by the government had a car and air conditioning. For entertainment, the household had two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR. If there were children, especially boys, in the home, the family had a game system, such as an Xbox or a PlayStation. In the kitchen, the household had a refrigerator, an oven and stove, and a microwave. Other household conveniences included a clothes washer, clothes dryer, ceiling fans, a cordless phone, and a coffee maker.” http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/07/what-is-poverty

One quote I have always liked was from the early Dinesh D’Souza (before fame and fortune went to his head and he was actually doing good research and writing). He had a cousin (if I recall correctly) in India who wanted to come to America, because he wanted to live in a place where the poor people were fat.

I’m beginning to think that the new meme about “white privilege” is a preemptive effort to avert much needed affirmative action reform.

Right around the time this term appeared, I also started to see articles indicating that, if one really wanted to offset life imbalances and disparities in opportunity, economic deprivation was probably a more useful measure of who was and wasn’t deserving. Does anyone really believe that the highly privileged children of successful blacks are more deserving of preferences than, let say, a white kid with a single mom, working two jobs to pay for a singlewide in rural Virginia? Or the kid of first generation Vietnamese immigrants? This whole “white privilege” thing gives the race hustlers an air tight lock on race based preferences exclusively and, and as an added benefit – purely unintentional I’m sure – it keeps out the poor white kid from the trailer park and all those sneaky, first gen orientals and Indians from the subcontinent.

You are probably more right about that than anyone knows. Progressive liberal leftism depends on convincing others to feel guilt for things they aren’t guilty of. And so called white privilege is perhaps the ultimate expression of trying to poison the well. It is no accident that such rhetoric is found on all campuses, TV movies, news, blogs, web pages, and papers everywhere. They’re pushing it full bore. Thank goodness it seems most people reject it as simplistic, sophistic idiocy. Still it is sad to see that there are some poor fools like the author who buy into the lie.

I believe that “white privilege” remains a Leftist meme because “institutional racism” failed to gain traction. Both are the kind of theories the Left loves – invisible, impossible to prove explanations that divert attention from real causal relationships and put the blame on the fallback bad guys, White males (for the most part).

“Institutional racism” was short-lived because it was overcome by history. In my lifetime I have seen the argument go from Blacks (and we have generally always been talking about Blacks rather than other minorities) fighting for the right to freely vote to the number of Black senators to a Black president. We went from Blacks being allowed to go to public schools to Blacks being allowed to go to prestigious law schools to Blacks being on the Supreme Court. So-called Black leaders want to ignore the enormous progress made in the last 50 years; their limousines and five-star hotels and $5000 suits and Rolex watches depend upon portraying Blacks as having no upward path to prosperity. Sickening, isn’t it?

There were simply too many successful Black men and women for “institutional racism” (racism built into the very fabric of every institution, government agency, and social structure in America) to be holding them back, so the race grievance industry needed another scapegoat to explain differences in outcomes. They had to explain the higher incidence of poverty, drug use, out-of-wedlock births, unemployment, and crime among Blacks (but strangely not among Asians and Indians – but they are “good” minorities for whom “institutional racism” and “White privilege” somehow don’t apply or something). Leftists could not face the hard answer (the breakdown of the nuclear black family, at lower levels today than in the 1950s and 1960s during the pre-civil rights era or even following the Civil War) or the clear cause of that breakdown (the Great Society plans and War on Poverty actions designed to assist minorities).

Rather than acknowledge that their well-intentioned plans to assist Blacks had backfired, Leftists ignored reality, refused to look at real problems, and instead created a straw man argument that would leave them with no blame but also could not possibly lead to any solutions. Once again, they could be intellectually satisfied in their academic echo chamber discussions and feel-good self-congratulatory “We’re so much more enlightened than other Whites who just don’t care or understand” camaraderie, but not do anything to actually help those they claimed to care so much about.

By definition, “white privilege” even if acknowledged and accepted, leads to no solutions. It changes nothing. The theory helps not a single person out of poverty, leads not a single man to marry his baby mama and stay around to raise his child. It keeps not a single person off drugs, nor keeps a single Black teen out of jail.

It does allow lazy White academics to promote their careers doing no rigorous academic research, and allows students to do no critical thinking or learning. It allows minorities to excuse failure and not make the effort to succeed, believing that the system is stacked against them when it is not. It inflames racial animus, facilitating those who want to take advantage of the politics of racial divide. And it allows race hustlers to continue to make millions acting as “community leaders” without making a bit of difference in the lives of people who could use real leadership.

From my perch of privilege, who am I to condemn sexual predators, and otherize them? If we ever want opportunistic sexual assault to end, we must start with ourselves, and consider our own privilege, and how much we probably deserve it. Until we do so, we should get comfortable with sporadic rape.

Oliver, if you are so worried about your position in life feel free to give up you education, and hand over all your money to the next homeless person you meet in the street. Perhaps that will relieve you of the tremendous amount of white guilt of which you are burdened. And your parents should ask for their money back, GU is not teaching you anything and in fact could be making you dumber by the moment.

I can only say one thing to such a pathetic excuse for a man as Oliver: I hope they mug you again.

Oh, one other thing. I desperately hope that someone as clueless as you is ever employed anywhere in the foreign service of the United States where you’ll doubtless make excuses for enemies who aren’t as privileged and just want to take our stuff.

What we have here is natural selection at work. For thousands of years the homo sapiens evolved and improved because the more feeble minded members of the species who wanted to pet a saber toothed cat or dance with bears didn’t get a chance to breed. With the advent of modern sensibilities and technologies we have enable degradation of the gene pool by protecting those with mental capacity not quiet up to survival. We should all celebrate Oliver Friedfeld in his quest for mortality, as the nature finally reasserts itself over soulless modernity.

To think that my wife and I were actually pleased when our son got accepted at Georgetown. Is this kind of shoddy thinking so prevalent there that it warrants publication? So glad he chose another university.

Your prose is insufferable and your opinion could not be more utterly backwards. I’m sure no one thinks you’re a pretty good guy, and least of all your attackers – they mugged you after all. Your perspective is utterly offensive and destructive to everything decent society stands – or used to stand – for.

Dude, you are the most PATHETIC EXCUSE FOR A HUMAN. Are you joking? This article has to be a joke. How far the left will go to keep the victim narrative alive and loath themselves for being white. Absolutely disgustingly pathetic. How about people take freaking personal responsibility for their actions in life? How about stop playing the victim card or the race card? How about realizing that equal outcome will never happen, but equal opportunity is 100% there. How about understanding that not everyone in life is dealt the best hand, but some of those who have refused to live the victimhood lifestyle have actually pulled themselves out of the hood and made something of themselves? You should keep writing pieces like this so everyone in America can understand how absolutely ridiculous the left is.

Oliver, Would you be kind enough to let me know when you get another phone and where you will be located at certain times of the day? You see, my son is wanting a new phone for Christmas. I have considered working some overtime, going without (not eating at restaurants, etc), saving a few extra bucks during the year, etc. to pay for it. But your commentary just got me thinking.

You see, I’m a white male who is over 50. I’ve worked since I was 14 years old, served in the military, gone to college, and have been almost continually employed the entire time. But your observations such as “Year after year, Washington, D.C., is ranked among the most unequal cities in the country, with the wealthiest 5 percent earning an estimated 54 times more than the poorest 20 percent.” got me to thinking about how wrong thinking I have been for all of these years. Instead of using the “golden rule” or “love your neighbor….” as a moral guidepost, I am realizing how not having what others have isn’t “fair”. And I guess “fair” is what it’s all about now. It’s not fair that I’m older, I didn’t have a choice being born white and being stigmatized for any possible connection to an ancestor, real or imagined, who might have owned a slave (my grandmother was white, poor and picked cotton). And being employed the entire time doesn’t help me understand those who aren’t. I’m not in the 1% in the US or probably in the top 10% either and that’s not fair. As a side note, isn’t basically everyone in the US in the top 1% economically if you look at the world population?

So back to where I was before….. Where are you planning on spending your time between now and Christmas? I need that phone for my sons Christmas present. You have one and I don’t and it’s not fair. It would be much easier if you could mail it to me. That way, I wouldn’t have to be out the cost of gas and a pistol.

BTW, I have a daughter in college and my boys will be heading there soon. Could you carry a lot of cash with you when I come by to pick up the phone? I think that would be fair.

So if a female student wrote an article saying “I was raped, and I understand why…….Who am I to stand from my perch of privilege, surrounded by million-dollar homes and paying for a $60,000 education, to condemn these young men as “thugs?” It’s precisely this kind of “otherization” that fuels the problem.”

Mr. Oliver Friedfield. With respect, you sir are a complete moron. It is now November 26, 2014 at 1:17 PM EST. I and millions of others just found out about this column on the Rush Limbaugh show in the past 30 minutes. This is that key moment in your life where your path is permanently set with limited opportunities due to your idiocy. Good luck with your future job searches in Foreign Services. I sure hope to hell that you do not end up in the State Department or in the Pentagon. I also hop that you do not end up running for political office in any way, shape, or form. You are likely to work in academia, left wing think tanks, left wing policy institutes, MSNBC, or the Obama Presidential library. Only in Washington D.C………….

When I read pathetic tripe like this, I pray for the day that white liberals are rounded up en mass from every college, government bureau, media outlet etc and sent to camps for immediately elimination. White Liberalism is a blight on the nation and the human race

This is kind hearted but sophomoric opinion. Status in life does not give you a right to rob someone. The people who mugged you DID want to harm you. Taking your stuff, that they did not pay for or earn, is harming you.

There are people who choose to do evil. Even rich, privileged people do bad things.

There is law and the rule of law matters. Justice is to be color blind. And with no regard to social status.

Please, think. Be more wise. I know it’s scary to think there’s a world where people want to harm you but there is. Your kind of thinking will get us all killed.

The only thing your privilege upbringing has done for you is make you a bit naive.

As a member of the School of Foreign Service, one would assume the author has some knowledge of Thucydides. His lesson regarding power may be instructional, both personally and in terms of international relations —

“Right … is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must.” — from the Melian dialogue (Strassler 352/5.89).

When you are lying prone on the ground, you are no longer “equal in power”. An unpleasant reality worth considering, especially for a potential foreign service officer.

Most people cannot afford all they would want, but yet, only a tiny minority of us resort to criminal behavior to meet those wants. With this view, an individual who earns $1,000,000/year, but steals so that he can afford to change his car each year is no different from the two individuals who robbed Mr. Friedfeld and his friend, but I doubt if Mr. Friedfeld would defend the millionaire robber as he did the “poor” robbers.

Way to go, Oliver! You certainly understand the plight of the down-and-out victims of our society. It is important that we take time to support folks, like this mugger, who view themselves as victims in our plenary society. They need to realize that they can never be as good as you. They could never work hard enough to reach the riches offered by our society like you. They need to be supported in their vocation of taking from others…others who worked, sacrificed, planned, succeeded. How dare we not lay down and be bullied by these poor, ignorant folks. They have met the expectations of their parents, friends, church, community, nation…right? After all, we need people like this to keep their own children down with them. We need them to instruct the next generation of takers and users. Without them, who will be the clients of our justice system, jails, prisons, cyber-protectors. Without them, how will my children – future educator, doctor, nurse, military member – know that they are superior morally, ideologically, academically. You kind words to your muggers help them to rationalize their actions; keeps them focussed on the low-life existence they were destined for. After all, we don’t want them to find a vocation in support of good, right? I assume that you and your ilk at GT spend many hours a week cleaning up your community, feeding the poor, giving money to homeless, volunteering in shelters, teaching street professionals, like your mugger, how to read and better themselves. Instead of providing another reason for this lost sole to step even lower in life, why don’t you actually try to rehabilitate him and those like him. Don’t “UNDERSTAND” the deviance. Actually show him a way out. The next mugging could result in the death of another black innocence.

if they’re robbing you, they’re bad people. If they have a gun pointed at you, and don’t value life (since they would quickly take yours if you resist), they’re bad people. You are privileged, though; to the point of mushy-brained-ness.

What liberals call privilege is hard work. People who have a lot have it because they or someone in their family worked hard, took risks, made relationships. It’s easy to see the end result and think “I want that” or “I deserve that”. But those who think that way don’t think about what it took to get that.

If this kid is so concerned about having so much, then he can give up what he has. Give it all to the poor people. Then they don’t have to rob him to get it.

The naivete of Georgetown student Oliver Friedfeld. Four years at Georgetown produced reasoning like this? Ollie is ill prepared for life and certainly not ready for foreign service. He is a wide-eyed, gullible wimp…the poster child for the millennial generation.

Remember the Georgetown Starbucks triple murder in 1997? That began as an armed robbery by Carl D. Cooper. Carl then shot three innocent Starbucks employees to death. No matter because as Ollie preaches, “…who are we to condemn this young man as a thug or multiple murderer? It’s precisely this kind of “otherization” that fuels the problem.” Sure Ollie.

I was a little surprised to see such a breathtakingly stupid opinion from a Georgetown student. It usually takes a full four years at an Ivy League institution to sink to this level of twaddle. Yet I believe in hope and change, to borrow a famously mindless slogan. There is real potential here for the realization of the American dream. Right now, Mr. Friedfeld clearly is an imbecile. But if he works very hard and applies himself diligently, and does not get mugged by someone more vicious (which would be justifiable of course), he might just advance to become a moron someday; an achievement worthy of our praise. Keep at it, Mr. Friedfeld; I have no doubt you’re the little engine that can.

I’m convinced that this has to be a massive troll or some sociology experiment. Otherwise such flimsy logic and self aggrandizing arrogance are not rationally explained. Well done. To so thoroughly satirize the progressive liberal leftist viewpoint is a Swiftian achievement. You are only missing a photograph of yourself clad in pajamas, nestling a warm cup of cocoa in your effete, bone white fingers. Bravo. It is to be hoped that other progressives attending colleges across America, bound for the state department, will read this Rosetta Stone of while liberal self hate and come to their senses before it is too late. Well done, indeed, sir.

Oliver, I don’t know what the “School of Foreign Service” is teaching these days, but I can safely say from your editorial that neither criminology nor criminal justice studies are part of their curriculum.

Firstly, you seem deeply confused about the purpose and function of the police. The police are not there to control access to your neighborhood, nor would they even have any such constitutional authority to do so if they were to make any such attempt to do so. Law-abiding citizens have the right to travel freely through any public area without restriction. Trespassing on private property is a crime, but that applies regardless of wealth, income, social status, race or other factors. The police do not restrict any particular portion of society from entering your neighborhood nor would they be able to if they wanted.

The police merely enforce laws. And even this is done primarily after a crime has already taken place by apprehending suspected offenders and turning them over to the criminal justice system for appropriate judgement. Rarely do police have the opportunity to intervene during a crime which is in progress. Although extensive community policing methods, law enforcement intelligence techniques and numerous other approaches are used to try to prevent crime before it happens, there still remains a great debate over how effective these approaches are and the degree to which they are successful. So ultimately, the only job the police can reliably do is investigate crimes after they have happened and hopefully identify the guilty party.

Secondly, criminals do not commit crimes because they feel that you personally “hold all the cards” or for any other such reason. Criminals are not modern day Robin Hoods who steal from the rich exclusively. In fact, a very large portion of crime is directed at people who are also in poverty in the same poverty stricken communities where crime takes place most frequently. It is exceptionally rare for a Beverly Hills mansion to experience a break-in and have the worlds largest diamond stolen by some arbitrary street criminal who merely happened to be wandering by.

Look up “Rational Choice” theory. In criminology, the theory states that criminals commit crimes based on what appears to be the most rational course of action at that given moment. What a criminal considers to be “rational” may not seem as such to the rest of us, because criminals often operate with limited information, misconceptions and a lack of education, causing poor decisions. But regardless, their choices are still rational from their own viewpoint. When considering a crime to commit, the criminal will analyze his chances of success, the potential profit to be made, the chances of being caught and the potential consequences if he is caught. If the criminal finds all of those factors to be favorable, he will attempt to commit the crime. If one or more factors is sufficiently negative enough to give him pause, he will likely seek an easier target.

So why were you mugged? Because you were an easy target.

And those muggers didn’t take your money to buy a better life for themselves. They probably spent the money on drugs. Their their drug dealer probably invested the profit to expand his criminal enterprise. All of this activity feeds into larger organized criminal acts, such as drug trafficking, illegal immigration, conspiracy and fraud. These people don’t care about you or your privilege. You were just a convenient mark.

The author’s viewpoint is so absurd I hope other potential criminals don’t catch wind of it so they can use it to justify criminal behavior. Can you imagine the next act of violence being excused “just because the criminal was dealt a bad hand?” Or how about a man who rapes a woman because “he was dealt a bad hand by being short and ugly?” This “over-compassion” for people who choose to do the WRONG thing is dangerous. It’s as if we want to take personal accountability and moral decision making and thought processes away from the individual and just toss the blame onto the world and everyone else around them. NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR ACTIONS OTHER THAN YOU. NO ONE FORCES YOU TO BE A GOOD CITIZEN OR A CRIMINAL. THE PATH YOU CHOOSE IS ENTIRELY UP TO YOU…….and you should readily face the outcome of whatever decision you make and not blame anyone but yourself…

Good point I hadn’t thought of. Oliver has just painted a big target on his fellow students. If the criminal element in DC follows The Hoya or any of the other sites that caught up his silliness (probably not a common pastime among street thugs, but you never know, I ain’t one to prejudge here), it is like putting a “rob me” sign on Georgetown students. Although I suspect the thugs and thugesses (must not be chauvinistic here) already have the students and professors pegged.

Fortunately for these students (and unfortunately for the innocent victims), crime statistics indicate that criminals tend to perpetrate their crimes within their own neighborhoods, preying on those within their own race and subcultures. This is something Oliver would never understand, as it goes against his narrative and vast sociological assumptive understanding of the universe.

Two lines to discuss.
First, “If we ever want opportunistic crime to end, we should look at ourselves first.”
That is what the criminals did. They looked at you and racially profiled you. They saw you and knew that you were an easy target. Just as some are pulled over for driving while black, you were mugged for walking while white and weak. If someone is driving while black and happen to have a little pot on them and get arrested it doesn’t excuse the fact they were profiled. Just as your assumption that they needed the money doesn’t excuse the fact that they profiled you. Are you going to walk up to the next poor looking African-American you see and hand them your wallet? If so, please record it and post it on youtube. I would love to see the reaction.

Second “The millennial generation is taking over the reins of the world, and thus we are presented with a wonderful opportunity to right some of the wrongs of the past.” Well, let’s start now. Let’s start by not letting double standards exist, especially, when it comes to race. You can’t complain about racism or discrimination for one group, and excuse it when it happens the other way around. That is what is going on in Ferguson. African-Americans only come out to protest when one of their own is the victim, and the other races could care less until it happens to their family. Making everything about race, discrimination, or ‘white-privilege’ is counter productive and takes the focus off the real issue. The protesters who make this about race are missing the point that police brutality is colorblind and has to stop. To bring it back home, the media is missing the point in Ferguson just as you as a media member missed the point in your situation. It is never okay to take something that belongs to somebody else. No matter how much you need it and someone else doesn’t it is never okay to steal. There are way too many people who are willing to help those who ask to justify that kind of behavior in this country.

You are young man, don’t let anyone make you feel guilty for having a blessed upbringing that allows you to attend a prestigious school. Just know that the kool-aid they give you at your liberal institution doesn’t have to be drunk.

The carefully constructed narrative on the Left is becoming more and more concerning. it seems the modern Liberal knows nothing about the Liberal founding principles of Western society, like rule of law, secularism, freedom of speech and democracy. Piece by piece the fascism of our enemies is infecting the minds of our so-called “academic Left”. Scary people indeed.

Anybody that agrees with the premise of this article needs to get themselves on a plane and go see some REAL POVERTY in Africa, S.W. & S.E. Asia, ( I have been in these regions since ’04) and you can see for yourself REAL inequality, Government Corruptions, Racism, Etc… and speak to those persons that would die trying to obtain the opportunities that ALL Americans have. Successful Americans have come from ALL walks of life. This is the one true place on the planet that no matter what your current station in life is, if you have dreams and you are willing to work hard for them, you have a damn good chance of seeing those dreams come true!

Only a senior in college could be to dumb, be such a moral relativist. You are the perfect example of a mind-numbed liberal; you think you are so superior in your thinking when in fact you are a complete moron. Here’s a newflash: There is right and there is wrong! There are millions of poor people WHO DO NOT MUG, ROB, BURGLE, etc. Crime is about values, not economics. To forgive criminals only undermines civil society and we get events like those in Ferguson. Your parents are either responsible or devastated by who you have become.

How embarrassing! You say, ” if they knew me, I bet they’d think I was okay.” Here is another hypothetical. If they knew you, they would indeed think you are a pretty good guy because they can keep robbing you and expect no consequences. What a gift!
I was mugged when I was 10 years old and I vowed that it would never happen again. I am familiar with guns, martial arts, batons, arnis, escrima, etc. Guess what, not once have I had to hurt anyone. And, in my four years at G’town, did I face a to-be mugger. Why? Because I am not a victim. The muggers can smell a victim a mile away.
Good luck serving in “unequal” areas.

I have been mugged twice. Both by dangerous crack or meth heads. Once my bride was with me. I felt really safe as they jabbed a .357 in my side and made my wife and I give out my wallet and her purse. If I could change anything, it would be that these two low-life thugs and thieves did this in Saudi Arabia and lost their hands or heads…

Totally unbelievable! As others have stated here, this is a prime example of the mental disease of progressive liberalism! This guy can’t even differentiate between good and evil…right and wrong. And what troubles me the most, is that with a degree in Foreign Service (whatever in the world that is), this guy most probably will obtain employment within government! This is exactly why our left-wing government today is so corrupted from within. This guy reinforces what I have said over and over again…”I’m glad I’m not young”! And I mean it. What a jerk!

What’s wrong, having a hard time locating the Marxist candidates already on the ballot? Throughout history, there have been numerous “educated” men of the author’s ilk – Karl Marx, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot etc. Wise up.

This is why I carry a concealed carry handgun on my person at all times. This article has convinced me to continue carrying my concealed handgun forever into the future. If these two idiots who like to mug liberal slopheads from Georgetown ever run into me, they are going to get 8 rounds in the chest each. And no, I will not be writing some pathetic article justifying the actions of potential murderers and thugs.

Tell me something Oliver. Being the genius you are. Wither you know it or not there are a lot of people more privileged and richer than you, in all the races. So does that give you the right to mug them ?, and do you think they will say ‘I can hardly blame Oliver,after all he doesn’t have the wealth that I have.

Sadly, you are so indoctrinated that you have proven resistant to Irving Kristol’s adage that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality. You were mugged *in reality*, and you manage to alibi the criminal actions of your assailants.

On a practical level, this means you should immediately abandon your field of endeavor. As John Belushi said in “Animal House,” “Seven years of college down the drain.” Foreign Service means coming up with solutions to existential situations in the here and now, not solving systemic root-cause social issues in other countries. A diplomatic officer in a foreign country does not solve poverty or corruption in that country, they work on conflicts and trade issues and real-world right-now problems that may flow from centuries-old social and political and cultural causes. Your job will not be to sympathize with the “muggers” but to keep American citizens from being mugged.

The thorough-going failures of President Obama’s foreign policy initiatives show how the “understanding and sympathy” approach only emboldens those around the world who would take your cell phone and cash on a broader world scale. The president has been visibly irritated and surprised after his apology tour that peace did not break out all over the world. After all, he was not that evil warmonger George W. Bush. We were leading from behind. We understood that we had been bullying the world. He acknowledged and disavowed White privilege, er, American privilege writ large. We reset those relationships, pulled out our troops.

After all, we fail at nation building after wars. I mean, look how we failed with Japan and Germany after World War Two, and with South Korea after the Korean conflict – these countries are social and economic disaster areas compared to powerhouses like Thailand and North Korea and Belgium. And when that Berlin Wall came down, those in West Germany rushed into East Germany for food and … no, wait, I guess that didn’t happen. We were pretty good at nation building when we stuck with it, come to think of it.

If you change any element of your story, your narrative becomes a tragedy and your feel-good self-congratulatory “I’m better that those who condemn criminals” piece falls apart.

Suppose you had worked hard for six months to earn the money for that phone. Now it’s gone and you cannot replace it. Feeling charitable towards these muggers?

Suppose you had important information on that phone, private information, personal information, and that information was used to steal your identity. You spend the next year trying to get your life back from ruined credit, stolen money, and drained bank accounts. You can’t buy the house you were shopping for. Still feeling charitable?

Suppose you hadn’t complied quickly enough and you had been shot. Maybe not killed, just turned into a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. Still understanding? The same factors would apply to the muggers, only your loss is greater. I’m just tipping the scales against what you are sacrificing.

You see, you are betraying short-sightedness and naiveté because for you the loss was minimal. Just a few dollars, an easily-replaced cell phone that you had backed up, and an exciting story to tell your friends and write about and gain minor notoriety. In your circle of friends you were undoubtedly encouraged to write this piece because of your bravery and insight. You had no idea of the firestorm of criticism you would run into because you live in a liberal echo chamber where your sentiments were cheered, but the web is worldwide (or so I hear).

White liberals who claim to “understand” and “empathize” with minorities fail to recognize that they are demonstrating classic racism, i.e., making judgments based upon race alone and over-generalizing. They may be doing so out of some sense of doing good, but their underlying motivation is a belief that other races are inherently different (and thus all the same and monolithic in some aspects) because of their race.

Conservatives believe as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached, that people are unique individuals with unique character and abilities, that they should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin, and that to lump people together because of race, color or creed is wrong.

Conservatives understand that there is a difference between race and subculture, and that many people confuse the two. Differences in outcomes that have a strong racial identification can be traced to subcultural factors (predominantly the breakdown of the nuclear family, leading to poverty, the use of drugs, crime, etc.) where race is a correlated, not determinative, factor. Studies of the success rates of Black immigrants from Africa and Haiti, among other locations, show that race is not the controlling factor.

Oliver, there is no way as a self-professed entitled White liberal you could possibly know what two Black individuals think. You cannot possibly know their background. You don’t know whether you were robbed for drug money or kicks, to punk a college kid. You don’t know what the life story of these kids were, whether they had good homes or bad, whether they had opportunities they had rejected or had never gotten any breaks. You assume everything from your cozy ivory tower, safe and secure after your little adventure where everything turned out okay rather than with you and your friend on steel tables in an antiseptic morgue with your parents weeping and railing to a stoic police officer asking why those animals had not been caught yet.

Facts are inconvenient obstacles to pseudo-sociological posturing, but here are a few for you to consider. The FBI’s 2013 crime statistics show that in 2012 28.1% of reported race of offenders by victims and 28.1% of arrests were for Blacks across all kinds of crimes. Since I cannot embed links I invite you to search for FBI crime stats if you so desire. That’s pretty impressive correlation and belies the false narrative of police targeting Blacks unfairly.

In 2013, Blacks murdered 2,412 out of 2,648 Blacks murdered that year. Whites murdered 193 Blacks. Whites murdered 2,614 out of 3,128 Whites murdered in 2013. No way of knowing how many of these were gang killings, prison killings, crimes of passion, etc.

Blacks comprised about 14% of the US population in 2013. Whites comprised about 63% of the population according to the Census Bureau (discounting the George Zimmerman “White Hispanics”). Thus Blacks murdered Blacks at 4 ½ times the rate that Whites murdered Whites.

Think about that, Oliver. What does that do to your, “if they knew me, I bet they’d think I was okay”? Do you really think that enters into their equation? Who people are, how likable they are, has nothing to do with whether they make a good victim or not. Three factors are primary – opportunity, valuables, vulnerability. You presented all three. Your sparkling personality and Kumbaya perspective would have made no difference to these guys, except possibly have given them a good laugh.

This also speaks to your being totally unsuited for Foreign Service – you have no concept of the dynamics of power. Robbery (and diplomacy, which Secretary Kerry demonstrates he fails to understand on a daily basis) is about the exercise of power. They use the weapon as a lever and fulcrum to overwhelm any advantage or objection you might raise to relinquishing what they want. They do not care about your property rights, the rule of law, the consensus of the international community, what the UN will say, or any strongly worded note they will get from State. These criminals do not care that the police will be looking for them. They will have your possessions (Crimea?) and you will not. They will risk being caught. If you have telegraphed that you want to “understand” them and “reach out to them” and such nonsense, they know you will not take direct action and thus they can sell your phone and spend your cash and move on to their next victim with impunity.

And the next victim may end up in that morgue because they don’t give in so easily, or they reach for their wallet too quickly and a nervous trigger finger twitches.

Will you then be willing to speak to the grieving family and explain to them that they need to understand that their White privilege and historical inequities forced these youths to kill their daughter? That would be diplomatic.

“Some caveats: The Census data that the analysis relies on is a statistical survey based on replies to questionnaires sent to American households. Its findings are subject to a margin of error making it less precise than the decennial census. Also, the D.C. Fiscal Policy Institute is a liberal think tank that also advocates for particular policies.”

Based on standard statistical analysis, the GENI Index, which is widely used, DC doesn’t even make the cut going back to 2011.

The effeminate little Hoya “male” victim ought to be castrated before he can pass along his genetically inferior DNA, this nation doesn’t need anymore weaklings like the downlow buck in The White House. The reason feralpavement apes rob, rape, and kill counter-culture Liberal do-gooders is they, the thugs, know they’re “immune” from prosecution thanks to the anti-White colored president and his radical Atty Gen. Eric “Red Menace” Holder who made it policy to protect THEIR “peeps”.

The savage inner city refuse prowling the streets of our nation see non-minority citizens as EASY prey and know they WON’T or CAN’T fight back because of the fear of being labeled a “racist” (term coined by Marxist queer Leon Trotsky) or unconstitutional restrictions on the 2nd Amendment enacted in many locales by bleeding heart Democrats. Now just let one of these violent Son’s or Daughter’s of Obama try “jacking” a conservative college student in a Free State like Texas or Florida and the coroner NOT the ambulance will be called for the perpetrator and his ghetto dwelling accomplices.

The solution to violent crime is for law-abiding Americans of ALL races to purchase efficient, rapid firing semi-auto handguns with large (15 round) magazines loaded with hollow point bullets and carry either Openly or Concealed then when confronted by a violence prone Mike Brown/Trayvon Martin-type just put “five in the ten ring”.

God save us from the feminine mindset, While I did not take the time to read every response, most of the defensive comments I saw came from females. Women will be the destruction of America through their process of being controlled by emotion rather than logic.

As for the author,…….he has my sympathies, for he must be one pathetic excuse for a man.

Why is it that the author and people of “such integrity and progressive mindset” always want the world to change in some sort of spontaneous, cathartic fashion, and yet themselves never think about doing it alone? Get rid of your privilege, you don’t need the masses to do that. Just have your mommy and daddy, who are paying for $60K education, write that check over to the very people you so empathize with. Have your mom and dad sell their house, take a vow of poverty, and give away everything they will earn for the rest of their lives to charity. Oh, and while they take that vow, make sure that they don’t just stop working their privileged jobs, but will work till death and distribute their ill-gotten gains to the very people you see to “understand”. After reading this article, I am starting to think that abortion is not such a bad idea after all, I wish your mom shared my newly-found enlightenment 18 years ago.

I’ll go out on a limb and suggest that this column describes an event that didn’t occur and was published to acquire passionate, indignant responses from conservatives for the author to incorporate into a paper he’s writing for a sociology class. If he’s half as smart as I think he is, Mr. Friedfeld (real name?) will also use this date as the basis of an article for a magazine or newspaper. I hope this paper receives an A, Oliver.

If he was trying to expose conservatives as racists (the way the activists tried a while back at a NASCAR event by dressing as Muslims but it backfired when they were treated with respect), he would have had to draft a more focused paper allowing commenters to react solely to the racial component of the crime and his sympathetic response, not his stupidity in general.

If his purpose was to elicit comments on conservative/libertarian responses to sophomoric (sic.) Leftist moral equivalency, naiveté and stupidity, his problem is that he makes no defensible case within the paper for his positions. His piece is without substance other than platitudes, the solve-the-world’s-problems that all freshmen do in dorm hallways drinking beer and playing cards at night thinking they are so wise. To show how wrong the replies are, you have to have a defensible argument laid out in the main piece to which you can contrast the troglodyte responses.

No, this is merely a silly young man, going to school in an echo chamber of like-minded students and professors, vetted by an editor who subscribes to the same empty-headed platitudes that only work in he vacuum of academia.

John, I’m an African American and you are foolish to presume that only conservatives are the ones that are scratching their heads on this one. What’s more sad than his soliloquy is that this young man will eventually make some contribution to society (hopefully not by becoming a school teacher in some inner city [We already have enough white liberal guilt school teachers who pretend to care about minorities, but instead do the opposite]).

Oaklandish, you seem to be assuming that “African American” and “conservative” are mutually exclusive. There are some black conservatives, all of whom are prominently displayed by white conservatives as supposedly comprising proof that they’re movement isn’t racist. Of course we’re on the same page regarding this young man: he’s a complete and utterly train wreck. It’s astonishing that someone
intelligent enough to gain admission to this university and last long enough to become a senior can be so simple-minded.

Following the “logic” of the person who wrote the article, if because there are inequalities, it is understandable people do bad things, then it is also understandable that men who are not good lucking will rape beautiful women, because good looks are not distributed equally.

So the author of the above article must agree that ugly men are justified to rape women…or he must admit he just wrote one of the stupidest articles in the history of the world.

This is ridiculous. When you steal, mug people or otherwise commit crimes you are a thing called a low life. The relative income of you or your victim doesn’t matter. These are people perfectly capable of finishing school, getting jobs and working hard. The fact is they choose not to/. But you sir are worse. You excuse and enable their behavior. Get yourself a handgun, a concealed carry permit (they have those now in Washington D.C.) and don’t allow this behavior in the future.

Got news for you as well. Don’t give me crap over poverty and race. If you fail to finish school, commit crimes or have children out of wedlock you and your children will end up poor. Those are all choices you can make regardless of your income or race. Period.

Also, if this were about rape, imagine the reaction everyone (myself included) would have if he made excuses such as, “I understand why – I came from circumstances where I’m in control of my life, whereas those poor people came from a background where they don’t have control of their lives, so they’re simply seeking control in whatever ways they can”. Can you imagine the outrage?

1) Armed robbery is a violent crime, not a property crime. That’s what Eric Holder’s FBI classifies it as, so if you want to call the DOJ a racist bastion of privilege then feel free, but you’ll make your idiocy plain.

2) You failed the Victim Selection Process. You were clearly disarmed (you live in DC and aren’t a wealthy politician), you are obviously oblivious about reality (see your article), and you knew you were in a crime-ridden area. Criminals don’t select their victims at random. Most actually use a screening process to maximize payoff and minimize risk, and you came up as a vulnerable omega male.

3) While you make the PC socially acceptable bleating noises about Privilege and play your race card, at the end of the day, you called the cops. That is, you wanted a man with a gun to come and solve your problem for you. That tells me that this incident really did bother you. If this really was just a property crime, and the perpetrator’s violence was justified due to your micro-aggression privilege White Guilt, why the heck did you call a cop — a professional public bounty-hunter of felons? If this was really no big deal, I’d expect you to turn the other cheek, donate even more of your possessions to charity, and let the incident lie. So that just tells me that your character is weak — deep down, you know this attackers were morally wrong, but you’ll ask other men to take on the unpleasant duty of cleaning up the mess while still bleating the correct noises about Privilege to try and make yourself feel superior.

There’s nothing superior about being an idiotic, vulnerable, morally confused beta. In an ivory tower, such a lifestyle may be ok, but in the real world, betas get threatened with deadly force and someone stronger take their shit.

I have a satirical website and I write stories like this. This is either a great peice of fiction, or the true story of a self-loathing liberal lunatic. We should get “comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins”, you say? I say, you spent $ 60,000.00 to be rendered unfit to survive in the real world. I would ask for my money back!

My God you are aspiring to be a diplomat. With this attitude you would say Bravo! to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for 9/11 just because of the inequality between the poor states of the Gulf and the West. I respect your opinion, however i pray that you will never be employed in the Foreign Service because you will act in an unpatriotic and unamerican way.

It usually takes four years of study at an Ivy League institution to write the twaddle that Oliver has written, but Georgetown no doubt has its share of prodegies. Despite the silliness of Oliver’s piece, there is always hope and change, to borrow a hackneyed cliche. In this case there is hope for a change in Oliver, and what I see is the potential for yet another confirmation of the validity of the American dream. As things now stand, Oliver’s piece indicates a level of thinking (if that is the right word) that reflects an imbecilic mind at work. But if Oliver works very hard and applies himself diligently (as would Horatio Alger), he may someday reach the moronic level, and this would be a cause worthy of celebration. Hope and change; hope for change, indeed!

As an African American school teacher, I have always taught my students that the ultimate form of racism is not what people call you, but to have such low expectations for yourself that society assumes that Blacks and Minorities “don’t know any better,” and therefore, the must be given a pass, whenever social ills take place in society.

I am very saddened that White Liberal Guilt is now a religious crusade – not to impart any knowledge or skill to encourage inner city youth to escape their surroundings and make a contribution to society, but rather, to keep us down, keep us dependent, and wade in the mire of bigotry of low expectations.

As a white (well, Jewish) first-generation American, I am deeply sorry for the racist White Liberal Guilt masquerading as social justice to which people of your ethnic group are subjected. I am also, however, thankful to you for speaking out about the true face of this epidemic – one of utter condescension and forced dependance.

These people always claim to be fighting to “give people of color a voice” – a noble goal if it were actually true, when it’s really “to give them a voice as long as they say what we agree with and tell them to and that keeps us in power”. Well, let them fulfill their true goal, and let your voice be heard. Please keep speaking out about how such an attitude of “this black guy committed a crime but that’s okay because he’s underprivileged and is black” is demeaning, because they won’t listen to any of us, and will shut us down as racists even if we gently try to point this out.

I take my hat off to you for speaking out, and for genuinely leading by example and likely encouraging inner city youth to truly escape and thrive. People like you contribute far more good to society and cause more real change than kids such as the author of this article likely ever will.

This is what happens when children get indoctrinated into this liberal mindset that actually being successful is some kind of “sin”. They justify the actions of a CRIMINAL and somehow feel guilty for what they themselves have. Oh wait, THEY don’t have it, they are being given it by someone who WORKED HARD for what they’re being given and therefore simply take it for granted anyway. Typical left wing propaganda.
His parents WORKED for and EARNED what they have and they’re paying for a, supposedly, good education for him.
And all he’s worried about is his “privilege” and thinks that someone that has robbed him is apparently some kind of “victim”.
Listen idiot, he robbed you because it’s easier to rob you than it is to WORK. He robbed you because it’s easier than it is to get an education. He robbed you because he knew you’re too cowardly to do anything about it.
He robbed you because people like YOU keep minorities and those in poverty ENSLAVED to welfare, food stamps, and every other “entitlement” out there and claim that they are “victims” and are “owed” something.
He robbed you because you’re too damn dumb to even care that a criminal with a gun is running the streets.

Wow…. Just, wow. Truly, honestly, sad. That $60,000 education has overcome even basic human dignity and the will to survive. If you would’ve decided to NOT turn over your iPhone and they would’ve shot you, would you still have thought “I deserved it?”

Dude, this opinion piece is a crime. At what point does someone taking something from someone else, end in your scenario? What’s the cutoff point? Are you expecting others to agree with your opinion? And if they don’t, is that a crime? Should people that steal from you be allowed to vote for sheriff, governor, senator, president? Should they be able to run for office? Your opinion legitimizes the crime of theft from the so-called “privileged”…some of whom put long hard hours into their careers to achieve this “status”. Some people weren’t born into wealth the way you were, and still achieved…are those “privileged”? Would you mind someone cheating off your tests if they weren’t privileged enough to know the answers? Are only some human beings excused from poor behavior in your opinion? Which ones? Why didn’t you give up your spot at Georgetown for someone less privileged and go to a community college?

Oh perfect, he’s in the School of Foreign Service. One day he’ll be making these same arguments on behalf of ISIS and the Taliban.

Oliver, you dunderhead, whether you condemn your muggers as “thugs” is largely beside the point. They condemned themselves as thugs by robbing you at gunpoint. Thugs who, no doubt, saw you for an easy mark.

Isn’t it presumptuous of you to claim that you “understand” why you were mugged? Did you know the people who did it, or do you honestly believe you can just profile them on the basis of their appearance, behavior, perhaps gun caliber and KNOW what their motivations, backgrounds, and value systems are?

Guys let’s leave the kid be, the points of rejection have been made ad nauseam. Granted the piece isn’t great and in parts downright misinformed, but it’s obvious that he was merely endeavoring to share a different perspective on the situation and trying to address this in a more holistic sense rather than a single experience.

I disagree unilaterally with most of what’s been said, but regardless of execution, at the very least I think we can all respect his original interest and goal for the article.

His goal is to say that whites are responsible for decisions criminals make because of disparities in income. He is saying that individuals have no responsibility for making moral or ethical choices, parents have no duty to overcome obstacles to raise their kids or remove them from harsh environments because of the cards they have been dealt.

He is saying that the affluent should expect to be robbed unless and until they sacrifice enough wealth through taxation to enable government redistribution to equalize outcomes in such a way as to eliminate poverty and remove the need for robbery.

This begs the question – at what level of shared wealth does the lack of coveting a neighbor’s possession end? If I have a 60′ flat screen and the potential robber only has a 50′, doesn’t that still pose a problem if the moral issue is not addressed?

The end result would have to be total equality of outcomes – everyone drives the same car, wears the same clothes, has the same amount of possessions, lives in the same houses. Everyone looks the same, else you covet my wife and she covets another’s husband (or she covets another’s wife, to be PC).

“Imagine there’s no heaven…”

No, I – and I suspect most of the posters here – cannot respect his original goal because it is silly and facile and superficial. It betrays an ignorance of reality and a trite theoretical application of wishful thinking that, if applied to a job in the real world (say, in the Foreign Service) could lead to disastrous real-world consequences.

$60,000 a year for a sociology major. I hope your parents are paying for this out of their own pockets. Because it’s just another thing we need here: an angry progressive coffee barista with a student loan debt that we the people will probably have to bear.
I do not blame you for your stupidity, I blame your parents.
Stay in your bubble, sounds like you tear easily.

As an African American I have to say that this feels like the first time I have read something from a white person that scratches beyond the surface. Hopefully, we shall see more of this more enlightened and holistically grounded analysis from white people or anyone in the future.

Unfortunately, it is pretty clear that you have not read much of what has been written by conservative thinkers on race and culture in the last 60 years (or going back over 200 years, including de Tocqueville).

Daniel Patrick Moynihan helped define the problem with the disintegration of the Black nuclear family back in 1965. He has been largely ignored, even though he was a Democrat. We must remember that the Democrat party has long been the party of racism – the party of the KKK, the party of Jim Crow laws, the party of the Confederacy, the party of separate but equal, the party of segregation, the party that attempted to filibuster and block the civil rights acts of the 1960s.

People forget that it was Richard Nixon who instituted affirmative action, not a Democrat (although it was not a quota system as originally implemented, but an affirmative duty for businesses to reach out to minorities to make sure qualified job applicants had the opportunity to apply and compete for positions).

When you look at places where minorities have the worst outcomes, have the worst crime, have the worst unemployment, have the worst drug use, have the worst illegitimacy rates, have the greatest loss of hope, you will find that Democrats have run these cities for decades – Detroit, Chicago, DC. The great progressive ideas to “help” have increased the misery index and increased the gap between the haves and have nots since the 1960s in a well-intentioned but failed attempt to help. I would argue that these efforts were based upon a paternalistic view by these white elites that minorities are inferior and cannot take care of themselves, so need charity, hand outs instead of a hand up or partnership.

Conservative thinkers and writers for decades have warned of the dangers of creating a permanent underclass through dependency. They have warned of the disintegration of the nuclear family, with the corresponding and undeniable related lowering of income, increase in incarceration and drug use and early death and disease.

Just a few authors to consider reading: Victor Davis Hanson, Mark Steyn, George Will, Thomas Sowell (OK, he’s a Black conservative, so in most progressive minds that makes him white), Friedrich Hayeck, Mark Levin, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Medved. I’d throw in Dinesh D’Souza’s “Illiberal Education” and “The End of Racism” – he’s Indian, but that’s almost white, right? And William McGowan’s “Coloring the News” for another perspective on media and race (along with Bernard Goldberg’s “Bias” which touches on the subject).

This will give you a start. I think if you spend a little time you will find that Oliver’s sophomoric (actually, 10th grade-level) ideas are so simplistic that they simply don’t belong in the room with adult thinking.

If you just have time for one book, I’d start with D’Souza’s “End of Racism.” I spent some time with Dinesh years ago; I am the first one to acknowledge that he has at times gone off the deep end, and let fame and fortune lead him astray, but his earlier work was solid and academically rigorous. He’s a smart guy, and as an immigrant from India has some interesting perspectives on the US and race.

Seeing how getting mugged makes you feel good about yourself and allows you to realize the injustices around you, I can only wish you more muggings and more robberies that will further allow into the full immersion of self righteous assessment of the world we live in. As you do your part, parting with your worldly goods in the hands of “misunderstood youths” please allow me to remain insensitive and uncaring because I choose to hang on to my cell phone and my jacket and my Nike’s when I am walking alone in the middle of the night. I am funny that way. I show hardly any compassion to those who want my stuff but don’t want to pay for them.
Different than you, I KNOW what a gun looks like,and know where to get one. You could do the same if you like. All you have to do is to get out of that bad neighborhood and move to America.

This is the single most idiotic thing I’ve ever read. I just don’t care enough to itemize all the moronic statements and ideas in this article, but feel compelled to express how completely ridiculous this editorial is. From the first paragraph to the last. I’m glad these animals didn’t shoot you. You’d probably nominate them for mayor and deputy mayor of DC.

“When I walk around at 2 a.m., nobody looks at me suspiciously, and police don’t ask me any questions. I wonder if our attackers could say the same.”
Are you attacking people like them? Why then would cops not view them suspiciously, since they’ve done something to warrant that suspicion. Namely, rob you. and here’s the obvious point. if black men weren’t commiting so much crime, would cops be out viewing them with suspicion? what you view as racism is them simply going to where the crime is. Thanks for,proving their point.
And what a way to stand up for victims. You actually think you deserved it? so, maybe they can meet up with you once a week and take more of your stuff. Or you can give them the address of your house and they bring a van over and get all the expensive stuff.
if you feel guilty about being wealthy then give your money away to charity. Don’t justify criminality because you think you somehow deserve it. Is that what your 60,000 dollar education taught you? That you’re the worlds punching bag because of your skin tone and parents money? Maybe you need to be going to a different college.

Obviously, getting robbed make people feel violated, and you are no exception to that fact. The only reason you blame yourself (except for getting cool point from your liberal professors and friends) is because he doesn’t want others to view him as weak. If anyone is guilty of ‘otherization’, it’s him otherizing himself. He wants to make it seem as if he is special and has learned some kind of lesson from being robbed. Like he states, he is above it all on his perch of privilege.

Dude, you’re only fooling yourself and the people who are nonsensical enough to believe your explanation. YOU GOT ROBBED AT GUN POINT.

Oliver is right. It is his fault. And he’ll probably do a lot more damage in his lifetime. We are going on 50 plus years now of the progressive agenda in cities across this country. And it has failed pretty much across the board. I’m not saying it’s failed everybody, just those progressive say it was/is going to help the most. And Oliver actually points out its biggest failure. Oliver grew up with an intact family for support and guidence. The odds say his thug brothers did not. The progressive agenda has decimated the family unit in urban areas. Isn’t it time we tried something different.

Looks like 19th Century European Imperialism is alive and well. This “White Man’s Burden” garbage is every bit as judgemental as calling his attackers “thugs,” it’s just painfully condescending instead of hateful. Bravo, Georgetown.

There is no police report or any report of it on campus. I think he made the entire story up. Besides that, if he was forced to the “floor”, then how is that outside? Last time I checked, the “floor” is inside. So, which is it?

He assumed that the incident took place the prior weekend, but given lag time normal in publication for editing and space, I checked the online stats for the Georgetown Police Dept. (Oliver states the incident took place in Georgetown, para. 2) for September, October and November. There is no incident report for Oliver Freidfeld. Perhaps the names have been changed to protect the innocent. http://pdrecords.georgetown.org/Summary.aspx.

However, a careful reading of the article does not indicate that Oliver claims to have made a police report. Ramzpaul infers he does because how else would a reporter know to interview him, but Oliver could have gone to The Hoya with his story and have been interviewed then. It would be de rigueur for a Leftist to go to the press rather than to the police.

Oliver mentions talking to a D.C. police office after the incident, but it is unclear whether this was just a passing conversation after the fact or related to an investigation.

I suspect that Oliver, being the good little progressive he is and motivated by white guilt, never reported to the police that the incident happened. He is the perfect prey, allowing the predator to hunt unmolested. If he reads in tomorrow’s paper that a co-ed is found dead from a gunshot wound in the same area with her purse and cell phone missing he will not give it a second thought.

I’m surprised the simpering light-in-the-loafers clown did not offer to host a gay rape party at his house as well, eats and treats supplied! haha. And this “thing” is going to represent America one day to a foreign nation? Good God, the sissy in the White House ALREADY encourages our enemies, this crybaby Leftist will get them to attack us! White Privilege. KISS MY A S S! I’m white, damn proud of it, and I’ve EARNED everything I’ve got and if some mugger or robber tries to take it, they’ll get enough .45 caliber holes in them to remind them that it was a bad idea.

Peace. (I’m white, middle of europe. Stupid to mention) Be proud of your distance, I’m sure you are. People like to point their fingers are never brave and wise enough to get aware they are also part of the human problem fucking around since the times from when we try to pretend understanding anything ‘caus we’re digged it out the dirt from. No matter who graved it. How can people grow up in a world everything is there ‘caus thousand of years “history” (which we only know from the perspective of the “winners”),and pretend they make anything earned of theyr “own”. And blame the “losers”. End of it. They won’t stop.

This isn’t what we’re taught – it’s just click-bait intellectual laziness. The founder of the Walsh School of Foreign Service was an ardent anti-communist who wanted to build strong minds for a diplomat corps ready to counter the threat. This kind of relativistic nonsense likely makes Fr.Walsh roll in his grave, and embarrasses the hell out of alumni who take seriously the professional academic charge of the SFS.

Also, these are the people who got the cigarette in Fr.Healy’s portrait whited out and the whole painting hidden off in a side-room.

You have the privilege of being oh-so-understanding and “fair” to your mugger because you are wealthy. (I do not care if you consider yourself “solidly middle-class” when you are on your “perch of privilege, surrounded by million-dollar homes and paying for a $60,000 education.” When what you’ve got in your pockets is all that’s carrying you over to payday and one call to your dad won’t make everything right, then you will have been tested. When they come to your home and take everything you have, then you will have been tested. Basically, you have to live like common people. But you probably never will.

The left says forgive them because they started off with a “bad hand”, what about all the poor people who werent scum of the earth. The left says oh if these poor folks only had a different life then they wouldnt be doing such wile acts, but unless you have a world simulator you will never know if these idiots would make the same choices wether or not they had the “good hand” or not.

Hey Moron, College is not for you!!!! You’re to stupid to make the grades…. why don’t you just look your BUDDIES up, and give them ALL of your stuff, and go home!!! After all, your parents didn’t have to work for , and buy those things for you anyway……..right???

My God, this is horrifying. I often hear about “white guilt” and the self loathing that liberals have, but to actually see a real, current day example of it…

I am left speechless.

“What has been most startling to me, even more so than the incident itself, have been the reactions I’ve gotten. I kept hearing “thugs,” “criminals” and “bad people.” While I understand why one might jump to that conclusion, I don’t think this is fair.

Not once did I consider our attackers to be “bad people.”

I’ve heard that liberals have a death wish, and I guess it’s true. Even when violently attacked at gunpoint, where you could have easily been murdered, you cannot bear to call these attackers what they are.

The degree of White Privilege conveyed by the author of this article is almost beyond measure. His moral superiority in assigning victim status on his attackers – and in recognizing the inherent flaws of his own class stature – could only have been achieved by someone who was advantaged enough to be educated in the finest of liberal academia. The rest of us poor schmos would have instantly assumed that we were being mugged for nefarious reasons unrelated to social inequality.

Bravo, sir. A shining example to those of us too dull to understand how to use whatever privileges we may have been afforded.

You can certainly feel comfortable letting yourself be victimized. I, and the rest of the rational world, will continue to do what we can to stop that kind of nonsense-via self defense classes, non-lethal methods, and, in states which observe a citizen’s right to protect themselves with a firearm, with guns as well. I have no intent to allow myself or my wife to become a statistic.

Is this is the kind of namby-pamby wimp our colleges and universities are producing with their politically-correct agendas and racial/gender/class/economic warfare rhetoric spewed forth by professors? For excusing his attackers’ behavior and blaming himself for being the victim of a crime, I declare the author of this piece pathetic. He should turn in his man card post-haste.

Dude, you are insane, and have allowed the liberal elitists to brainwash you. You are not inherently bad because you are white. You are a little stupid, but the color of your skin does not make you a bad person. Your parents need to get a refund for all of that college tuition they put out, because neither you, nor the rest of the world has been served by you getting an education.

So next time, if the perps put a bullet in the back of your head, that would be OK also, because of DCs income inequality? Here is a perfect example of the results from leftist institutions of higher (?) education, turning young brains into mush.
Interesting how DC is doing everything possible to deny issuing concealed carry permits to law abiding residents, but the DC criminals seem to have no problem obtaining firearms, and carrying them. Maybe the DC police are only issuing permits to gang bangers.

By the author’s logic, ugly people should be allow to rape cause of their lack of privilege in the looks department. Just another example of liberal complete lack of logic wrapped in a warm collectivist mindset. Thanks for confirming why I am withholding my contributions to the Georgetown Fund this year.

This sad example is less of a justification for “wealth redistribution” than it is a precautionary tale as to why your children should be exposed to the example of work and the value of that work, as well as social and/or religious values, including the prohibition on theft, which has been repeated in the Code of Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments and scores of other documents across a wide variety of societies and eras.

Only someone who grew up completely isolated from those could have such an attitude that would not only justify the actions of criminals, but in fact place the blame on the victim.

Enjoy America while she still exists… with future leaders like this we have less time than we think.

Wow! Mr. FriedFeld, as evidence by this rather poorly written piece, represents a textbook case of “Stockholm” syndrome.

Given the quality of this purely emotive piece, it is clear that Georgetown is truly resting on its laurels; granted, it has long since severed its roots and connection to its once great Roman Catholic identity and continues to accommodate the moral bankruptcy of today’s zeigeist…sad, just sad!!!

It amazes me that you try to justify their use of illegal firearms to assault you for money. You also have no idea what they were thinking, you think they intended not to harm you, but you don’t know. You don’t know what those guys did or didn’t do to prior to robbing you. You have no idea what other crimes they have committed or whether they even tried to learn and graduate school. Giving them money and free stuff isn’t going to fix the gap in equality. We need to focus on school and the importance of an education and getting a job and on family values. Kids turn to gangs because they are seeking support. Stop justifying crimes and start fixing the root of the problem.

Hi there… I’m an outsider, not attached to Georgetown university in any way.
I’ve been trying to find any evidence that the incident described by Mr. Friedfeld ever actually happened.
Can anybody show me any evidence, other that this Op-Ed, that the “robbery” ever happened?
If it didn’t happen, and the story is false, then Mr. Friedfeld has accused 2 African-Americans of committing an armed felony. It’s my understanding that DC cops take gun crimes VERY seriously.
If this is a hoax or satire, then this may not bode well for Ollie.

Not sure why you would think it was false, but yes, all signs suggest that it did in fact happen. We students got a public safety email from the campus police about a mugging off-campus at around the time that the author says he was mugged and (if I remember correctly) the suspects were described as black men. There’s also no real reason to think he would lie about getting mugged just to write an article in the student paper.

How dare you. How dare you sympathize with criminals. As an African-American, there are plenty of us who work damn hard and whose ends still don’t meet who would never be reduced to mugging people at gunpoint.

How dare you be so condescending from your ‘priveleged’ perch to equate poverty with criminality and lawlessness. You Sir are the worst kind of condescending liberal and you are doing a major disservice to the people you claim you want to help.

“To the author:
How dare you. How dare you sympathize with criminals. As an African-American, there are plenty of us who work damn hard and whose ends still don’t meet who would never be reduced to mugging people at gunpoint.
How dare you be so condescending from your ‘priveleged’ perch to equate poverty with criminality and lawlessness. You Sir are the worst kind of condescending liberal and you are doing a major disservice to the people you claim you want to help.”

Bravo, Karyn! Well said. I wish this author would see it.

This article was such an insulting slap in the face to decent, law abiding citizens.

Friedfeld is the poster child for what is wrong with higher education in the western world. The far left wing has completely taken over the “soft sciences” and there is no balance.

How this came about is perfectly explained in the novel “The Rape of Alma Mater”.

Because so many areas in the soft “sciences” are contentious (history, racial and ethnic studies courses, sociology, etc etc), universities need to make sure to balance out their professors in those areas. They need one left wing professor for every one right wing professor.

That way, these naive, impressionable students won’t lack the balance like they do now.

Friedfeld is a victim in my book. A victim of indoctrination, a victim of one sided “study”, and a victim of an ideology that sacrifices truth, fairness, and justice because they think they know how to make the world “a perfect place”.

They don’t. They are going to end up getting kids like Friedfeld hurt or killed.

Friedman should be forced to take 5 classes in sociobiology. This way, he would finally see how foolish and deceived he is. Sociobiology shows human truth. He should also be forced to read the book “1984” by Orwell.

“That rifle hanging on the wall
of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage
is the symbol of democracy.
It is our job to see that it stays there.” – George Orwell

This has to be a satire, right? Kind of like the Duffel Bag? Right?? Either way, you have your idealism solely because at the end of the day you can retreat back to your ivory tower of smug, holier than thou attitude… Frankly, the vast majority of human beings would be extremely pissed if they were mugged, including me.

A simple thought to ponder from an alumni from the University of Hard Knocks… Who in this world has the inalienable right to take what is not theirs?

Oliver, thank you. You give me hope. If I die tomorrow, I will be easy in my soul because I’ll know that there are people like you whose eyes and heart are not jaded enough to distort the truth of another’s spirit. What a blessed contrast you have provided to our current environment of hate and fear. For me, you epitomize the quote “Earth’s cramm’d with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,. The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries”. Thank you for taking the time to see.

This is racism of the worst kind. Though the author doesn’t say it, we all know the attackers were black. If they were not, he would never mention the whole “privilege” thing. The author is, to put it bluntly, essentially saying that poor blacks are all so stupid that they cannot be expected to obey “white laws”.

I’m sorry, kiddo, but I refuse to accept that just because someone has darker skin than me, they should not be held to the same standards as everyone else.

Surely Oliver Friedfeld will not continue in “the Man’s” corrupt system by taking a degree that others paid for (doubtless out of ill-gotten gains sweated out of the poor and disadvantaged) when so many have no access to an education at Georgetown. Instead of simply justifying a mugging as an attack on white privilege, Ollie needs to rid himself and his life of all such privilege forthwith.

What a pajama boy! Don’t apologize for being better off than someone else! You’re justifying a criminal act that happened to you. Don’t justify criminal behavior…period! Get comfortable with sporadic muggings and break-ins??? Are you kidding me??? So if they’re, caught, what will you do? Drop charges and send them along with cash gift cards?

during the 2008 election I was walking through Old Town looking at the multi-million dollar townhomes. I am a white woman – first in my family to attend college (local public) and I worked my way through and finished in 4 years with no debt and high grades. I have faced financial challenges – and have been the victim of assault (2 cases one by blacks, other by whites). I have always been fiscally responsible and learned you live within your means.

i wanted to go up to the doors on the houses with Obama signs. “Hey since you are for “Share the Wealth” , I expect you to give ME a week rent free, once a month. How dare you (hypocritically) claim to want to “share the wealth” but be unwilling to let me live in YOUR house, after all I only was asking for one week a month!”

Not saying dude is not “solidly middle class”, but considering his $60k tuition is about $16k what the average middle class household makes in a year, I doubt his middle class bona fides. Generally someone from the actually middle class would be irate that some criminal took that which they had worked so hard to earn.

I’ve been mugged myself, twice as a matter of fact. I am about the author’s age, white and middle-class. I was empathetic towards both muggers, as it is obviously an act of desperation and I was aware that a lot had to do with their circumstance. Yet, it’s one thing to put yourself in that person’s shoes and understand what they must be going through and another to push the blame onto yourself. Everyone has a reason and most make sense within the confines of ones own head. But, as I believe, and as they should be teaching at Georgetown, morality is not relative based on your circumstances and views. And I’m sure many of the mugger’s childhood peers have upheld moral truths and not done as he had done. The muggers are thugs. You can feel sorry for their background and what they have had to go through, but it is wrong to blame circumstances for reprehensible behavior.

My feeling is that the author will probably feel different about this sort of thing when he is gainfully employed having to work his own way through the world. Does this statement make me guilty of generalizing (that he is a student who is not having to work his way through school)? Perhaps. I guess at the end of the day I sense a great deal of naivety.
About his stickup boys: As has been mentioned above, to suggest that they were practically forced into this behavior removes their agency. I think they deserve to be credited with being able to make decisions. Otherwise they’re just robots. However, I will say from first hand knowledge that youngsters between 12-16 can’t make a good decision to save their lives. I guess I have trouble getting past the naivety…

“Rather, I plead with you to see a mode of life in our midst, a mode of life stunted and distorted, but possessing its own laws and claims, an existence of men growing out of the soil prepared by the collective but blind will of a hundred million people. I beg you to recognize human life draped in a form and guise alien to ours, but springing from a soil plowed and sown by our own hands. I ask you to recognize laws and processes flowing from such a condition, understand them, seek to change them. If we do none of these, then we should not pretend horror or surprise when thwarted life expresses itself in fear and hate and crime.”
― Richard Wright, Native Son

That’s really great Lauren. You post a quote by someone else, but you’ve failed at the message it expresses. Other than a blind quote, what have YOU done to change humanity, stunted, distorted and thwarted lives? Or is it that you really don’t want to get “your hands dirty”?

“Last weekend, my housemate and I were mugged at gunpoint while walking home from Dupont Circle. The entire incident lasted under a minute, as I was forced to the floor, handed over my phone and was patted down.”

You say that you were “forced to the floor”? I would have expected that you might have been forced to the ground, but “the floor”?

Mr. Friedfeld, you should pray and thank God, that you’re still alive.
As a retired 30 year veteran of the DC Police Department, I was involved in the arrests of hundreds of the types of “Thugs” that robbed you. I worked the majority of my career in the Second District ( Georgetown & Dupont Circle areas included).
Liberals like you, have the “Ostrich Syndrome”. Pull your head out of the sand and see what is happening. These young Robbers, know that young college kids like you, party on Friday and Saturday nights. Then, between 2 & 3 AM. they walk home highly intoxicated. Easy prey for these predators.
I have investigated Rapes, Armed Robberies and Murders in the GTown area. The last three Murders I worked, were the senseless murders of the three young kids in Starbucks on Wisc. Ave, NW. Through my experience some of the most vicious criminals are usually young, 16-20 yrs old. Here is an example of just how vicious a couple of 16-17 year old DC High School Students can be:
Two 16 year old young men from DC, drove a stolen car to Danville, Va. They observed an elderly woman (65 ), park her car. They robbed, kidnapped, raped, shot her in the head and left her on a logging road. Several days later I arrested the same boys in the area of Wilson High school after they had pointed a gun at a student. After the arrests, their criminal activities in Va. were discovered. They are both serving life sentences in Va. I find it hard to drive through DC without remembering a criminal act that occurred in every block. What the liberals fail to understand, is that there will always be vicious criminal predators. The cops are the thin “blue line” separating the predators from the decent people. The liberals are causing that line to get thinner by the day.
I wish you well Mr. Friedfeld. Keep you head up, always on a swivel and be constantly aware of whats going on around you at all times. Be Safe !!

Give me a break. Any lawyer, cop, judge will tell you that people who commit crimes like this do not operate on the same moral/logical plane as the rest of us. Would you risk years in jail for armed robbery conviction for $100?

When that person pulled a gun on your, your life was in the hands of person who had already made some very poor life decisions.

I live in Logan Shaw area of Washington, DC.
I am a total liberal here living in a economically-income mixed neighborhood.
You were robbed by very bad people: not economic Socialists seeking
social-economic equality.
These would-be murders have no connection to those who work for
social justice: their actions foil that.

I was homeless at times as a child and grew up poor. I am a minority. I was raised by a single mother. Not once did it cross anyone in my family’s mind to put someone else in danger because of the hand we were dealt. You were mugged by bad people. When life deals you a bad hand you should just suck it up and hope for the best. I consider myself liberal and very anti-conservative. Wrong choices don’t happen to us. We make them. You might not understand the world that I come from but I hope you realize that a hard life is no reason to harm others. For a lot of us life is and has been hard. Yet the majority of us carry the weight of it and push on. Understanding that we may live and die a whole life in poverty. I believe the mind set of a young man that enables him to wield a tool of war and death is the same mind set that allows some police and many soldiers to dehumanize the criminal or the enemy. It is the desire to have power over those you perceive to be weaker than you that is wrong. It is bad. It is unethical. From the elite politician to the poverty stricken mugger, it is bad. Wrong. Man will never get far if he continues to fear that he does not have enough. If he is angry that others have more. I am not wealthy. I never was. And very likely I never will be. Next year I could lose my job and be forced to sell what belongings I have. But I will never harm or frighten others to eat. Not because I fear god or the law. But because I will want to fall asleep knowing that I am not a bad man.

I bet Oliver’s Sociology prof would give him an ‘A’ for his brilliant display of empathy for the gun-wielding felons. But isn’t it odd that there’s not even a hint that Oliver understands what might be the cause and therefore the solution to inner-city crime ? Well Oliver, here it goes: The cause is lifelong unemployment of too many residents and the cradle-to-grave welfare benefits that provide food, health-care, rent-subsidies, cell phones, etc, etc, even free-deliveries of babies for unmarried unemployed mothers. The open-borders and illegals taking jobs is one HUGE cause of the unemployment, and the welfare state that absolutely enables (if not outright encouraging) single-parenting and dropping out of school is another HUGE cause of unemployment and dependence on a willing govt. So Oliver, if you would EVER understand these to be causes…….then what type of solutions would you propose?

I was in Dupont Circle earlier today, and I was talking with my dad about the possibility of moving to DC itself after graduation (I’m looking at several jobs in the District). I kinda decided that I’m actually going to get an apartment in Arlington so I don’t have to pay exorbitant taxes and am still able to own and carry a gun. I go to UVA, a school very similar to Gtown, but because muggings against UVA students are pretty commonplace, students seem to have little sympathy for the muggers. The main student neighborhood is located next to the poorest and most crime ridden part of Charlottesville. If something like this ever showed up in the Cavalier Daily, I’d be the first to bring it up at my weekly student council meeting and set everyone straight. I am a proud Glock 19 owner, and I carry whenever necessary (as long as I’m not going through grounds as it is an idiotic “gun free zone”).

Oliver…..tsk tsk. Show me proof of what reporter interviewed you and show me proof of the iPhone you had shut off (which makes sense after it’s been stolen) and I will donate 5000 to the charity of your choice.

I believe you have a misunderstanding of the situation. To have such evil in your heart to hold another human being at gunpoint, is beyond my comprehension. I don’t care how desperate you become, there is a line a human being should not cross. You are not cut from the same thread my friend. I didn’t come from money. I worked on cars for 20+ years while creating an IT company on the side. I can finally reap the benefits after working day and night. I put my time in and made something for myself. I would never consider putting another human being in harms way.

Liberal guilt at it’s best! DC at night is a war zone plain and simple. Even in broad daylight you had better have your head on a swivel and know where your at! “It’s my fault I got mugged”!? It amazes me how especially young people have no sense of danger and wonder why they get robbed or killed?

The man who mugged me is, by definition, a thug, a bad person, and a criminal. I was naive. I had never actually encountered a bad person before. They are real, they are out there, and they target the weak.

I wasn’t alert. I was heads down on my phone and oblivious to my surroundings. I was a completely innocent person minding my own business when a criminal saw my obvious disadvantage and he attacked me. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, shame on you”.

Unlike Oliver, I have no sympathy for my attacker. Quite the opposite, actually. If I read about a man attempting to mug someone and getting shot by his would be victim, I will smile.

You do realize that they’re not robbing people so that little sis can have that operation she needs, 95+% of this money goes to alcohol, drugs, partying, and avoiding work. And also that the majority of their victims are people in the same economic boat as they are. I’m guessing that majority has a different view of these criminals than you do. That’s your real privilege.